During a recent chat with Battleline Podcast, Slipknot‘s frontman Corey Taylor revealed that the band members wore masks not actually to hide their identities but rather for a creative reason related to the type of music they wanted to deliver.
Slipknot members’ faces have been revealed over the years with unmasked interviews or other appearances. So, when asked if being in a band where their identities were concealed was different, the vocalist replied:
“Honestly, it wasn’t that hard for us to kind of walk away from that after a while because the masks were never really truly about hiding our identities. It was more about us to become more a part of the music that we were playing.”
Further reflecting on the true purpose of Slipknot masks, Taylor continued:
“It was always much more of a creative reason behind those masks. It was us being able to touch that person inside us who was who needed that music. Because sometimes, when you do it, it can kind of get lost in the structure of just being a human. There are inhibitions that will reign you in.”
The ‘Duality’ singer went on to explain how it feels to wear masks:
“There are points where you go, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t go that far,’ but then you put that mask on, and it all fades away, and now it’s just all about getting to the absolute middle, the absolute peak of that chaos, the eye of the storm. Being in it and wanting to jump into it.”
In a 2021 interview, Corey Taylor had again talked about what wearing different masks on stage represented for him, saying:
“It’s a little bit of certain aspects of me. Nobody is one-sided; everybody’s very multi-layered, and we all have different dimensions to us. And that mask and that music represents a certain side of me, certain events in my life, certain things that I’ve gone through, certain things I fight to this day.
And when I take it off, I can kind of come back and be a well-rounded Corey, as opposed to just this nightmarish guy. But it’s definitely a part of me; it’s not all who I am, but it’s definitely a part of who I am.”
Below, you can watch his full interview.
