It’s the night before Christmas, and Corey Taylor has appeared with a twinkle in his eye to drop truth bombs down your chimney and provide more shade than your town Christmas tree.
The Slipknot frontman has capped off a cantankerous 2015 with one final, epic rant.
In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone, the no-bullshit singer dug his Santa claws in to a number of high-profile individuals, organisations and pieces of pop culture, while offering some words of praise for a select few.
Find out who’s on Father Corey’s Naughty & Nice list, below.
NAUGHTY
Donald Trump
“I can remember when [former KKK Grand Wizard] David Duke ran for president, and people scoffed at him. It was a joke. Like, how do you even consider the fact that you’ve got a shot at this? And now here comes Trump. And just because he’s a fucking talking head on television, people are taking him seriously. Between that and the fact that he is appealing to some crazy fucking fear in the conservative wing of America, it is scaring me to be honest. The Republicans need to fucking disavow him if they want to be taken seriously at all — not only by middle-of-the-road America, but by the rest of the fucking world.”
Hillary Clinton
“Everything about Hillary seems prepackaged and planned. Obviously, I don’t know her as a person, but everything about her seems forced.”
Justin Bieber
“[I used to like him] until he started becoming a fucking caricature of a spoiled brat.”
Pop Music
“I’m just so out of the loop when it comes to pop music, because it all sounds the same. It’s all the same chord progressions with the same quirky chorus, or the same hip-hop beat that took 21 people sitting in a room to come up with. It bores me.”
The Grammy Awards
“I have a hard time with the way that all of my genres are represented and the way they’re disrespected and marginalized. And yet, because of the way they handle it, when you do win, it’s a little sweeter. It’s not like we’re getting nominated across the board the way a lot of pop and hip-hop artists are. But for us, the fact that we really only had one win and now we have two categories, it’s a lot like trying to hit a needle with another needle. So it’s cool to get that acknowledgement, but at the same time, my hopes and dreams don’t rest on whether or not I’m going to take a phonograph home that I can’t even play records on.”
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall Of Fame
“The fact that Madonna got in before Deep Purple got in? Those people can kiss my ass. Like, fuck you. Stop calling it the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Stop. Because it’s obvious that you don’t give a shit about rock & roll. If you did, bands like Deep Purple and Cheap Trick would’ve been in years ago. And that’s fucking upsetting. Call it the Popular Music Hall of Fame. Call it anything other than that. Because all you do is fucking piss me off.”
“[If Slipknot got in] I wouldn’t even go, dude. I don’t give a shit. All of that stuff is counterproductive. It’s like, “Oh, God. I hope they like me.” That’s why you go out on tour. That’s why you try to sell albums. I don’t give a shit about a museum. Put me in a fucking museum? Are you kidding me? We’ll put our own museum together and share it with our fans.
“…It’s about creating something for your fans instead of trying to become fucking some part of some club that nobody gives a shit about anymore. But then again, what do I know? I am a prick.”
NICE
Faith No More
“Faith No More’s Sol Invictus [was my favourite album of 2015], just because I never thought it was going to happen. Then, all of a sudden, we get Motherfucker and Superhero, and I was like, ‘Holy shit! What the fuck is this?’ Then you get the whole album, and it’s such a great, dark, moving album. It was what I wanted it to be. For them to come back with that much attitude and do it their way and not give a shit what anybody thought, it was beautiful.”
Avengers: Age Of Ultron
“I loved Ultron. I thought it was so well put together. There was almost an Avengers backlash when it came out, and I’m looking around going, ‘What the fuck are you people talking about? Let’s not forget: It’s the Avengers. It’s not Shakespeare. We’re not curing fucking cancer. This is a comic-book movie for comic-book fans. Shut the fuck up.’ It really, really pissed me off like something fierce. I saw that movie fucking seven times in the theater, like I loved that flick.”
Mad Max: Fury Road
“Fury Road… caught me by surprise. I was on the road, and I didn’t have a chance to see it in the theater. I saw it on VOD and proceeded to buy it fucking 12 times; every hotel room I was in, I had to watch it again. I watched it with my son, and he hadn’t seen the other ones, so it was kind of a shock for him, like, ‘Holy fuck, what is this?’ And I’m like, ‘Right? I know!’ I just thought it was incredibly well-shot. The colors were incredible. The fact that [director George] Miller was able to fuse so much live action with just the smallest hints of contributive CGI, that’s the way you make an action movie.
The coolest thing that happened was when fucking Tom Hardy was promoting the movie, he said, ‘It was like Cirque Du Soleil meets fucking Slipknot.’ I fucking fanned out like nobody’s business. I lost my shit. I was like, ‘Bane just fucking said some cool shit about us!’ I was so stoked. I showed Clown [Crahan, Slipknot percussionist], and that got his fucking head going. I took that as a huge fucking compliment.”
US Democratic Candidate Bernie Sanders
“Bernie Sanders… just doesn’t give a shit. And that is so fucking refreshing. That dude has balls the size of church bells. I think if it came down to the debate, Sanders would shred Trump. Shred him. And I think he’s got 10 years on Trump.
And Bernie seems like he believes in what he’s saying; he’s trying to bring people together instead of pull them apart. And between Paris, San Bernardino, Black Lives Matter, this country is coming apart at the seams and we don’t need someone ripping us apart. We need someone to bring us together.”
Scott Weiland
“I’d met him a handful of times. He was always very nice. Obviously, people have heard the horror stories about him. And then, obviously, reading that letter that his ex-wife and his kids put together, which I thought was very profound, it’s, like, that’s the world we live in right now, where’s people make a myth out of something. So you’re getting two sides of a story.
For me, it was about showing respect to a man who helped write some of my favorite songs. I was a huge STP fan. I was a fan of Velvet Revolver. For me, [it’s] about letting people remember why he was held up like that.”
5 Seconds Of Summer
“Honestly, the only real pop music that I hear is through my kids… There was a lot of 5 Seconds of Summer [played in my house this year], who I actually got to meet not too long ago, and apparently they’re massive Slipknot fans, which I did not see coming. And they were really, really cool guys. I couldn’t name one of their songs, but I’ve heard them.”
The Pope
“This pope intrigues me because he seems like he has the true heart of what religion is supposed to be about, which is inclusion and not exclusion. It hasn’t swayed me to commit to Catholicism or anything like that, but I like the fact that he is trying to bring people together.
“…He is the man. I love the fact that he speaks his mind. That is what you need; you need people cutting through the rhetoric of politics, because half the time these people are talking and they’re not fucking saying anything. And going back to Trump, I think that’s one of the reasons why people are so energized by him, because he isn’t touting anything that even resembles a party line; the problem is what he is saying. The Pope is honestly the same thing, but the exact opposite. He’s trying to bring the people together by dropping the differences. And that is an inspiration.”
