Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor says the band’s promotional campaign for their highly anticipated fifth album, .5: The Gray Chapter, and particularly their use of the internet, is a way of returning to the “excitement” that fans used to feel in the lead-up to an album release, which some say the web killed.
“I think it’s the same approach with different tools, really,” Taylor told WAAF (via Blabbermouth). “Because back then, the Internet was really just word of mouth. And that’s how this band started, that’s how this band built its foundation, was street level, word of mouth, people talking about us.”
“I think because of that, and because we’ve learned how to use these tools over the years, we’ve been able to take an old-school approach with the mystique and the anticipation and releasing little bits and pieces here and there to build that excitement, [which] I think is really a lost art,” Taylor added.
After confirming that the band’s latest album was “98 percent done” back in July, Taylor told interviewers that the plan was then to “slowly but surely get people to lose their minds for the next couple of months” by leaking “little stuff here and there”. The band followed-up on the frontman’s comments by unveiling a series of mysterious teaser videos, before finally sharing the album’s first track, The Negative One.
“People are more prone to just throw up into the Internet, and then, ‘There you go. There it is. And let’s pray to God it’s a hit,'” Taylor told WAAF. “We love building that up and just getting it to that fever pitch just before it’s about to explode, and then giving the audience every ounce of payoff that it deserves.”
“I think that’s one of the wonderful things about being able to use technology to your advantage and not using it to glom over the fact that you have no talent or no idea what the hell you’re doing,” he added. “When you use it right, you can have that same excitement that you used to feel when your favourite band was putting out an album and you couldn’t wait for it. And I think we’ve been able to do a good job at it.”
Slipknot recently unveiled their video for the first single to be taken from the new LP, titled The Devil In I. As well as revealing the new masks that will be worn by the Soundwave-bound group for the duration of their current album cycle, it may have also disclosed the identity of the band’s new bass player.
