Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor and percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan have made a cameo appearance on the BBC2 program Artsnight to discuss their iconic stage masks.
During the interview, which is scheduled to air this Friday, the pair talked about why the band wears masks, and what the masks mean to them.
“I had gotten a version of this mask when I was 14,” Crahan begins while holding his legendary freaky-ass clown mask. “I just never knew why it was in my world but it was always around me. Then one day, it just so happened, it was that moment of clarity to decide what I want to project. This thing has no fuckin’ limits.”
For Taylor, the masks offered a shot of uniqueness and a way for the band to go against the grain of what was occurring in music when Slipknot first arrived on the scene.
“That mask for me has always been a physical representation of the person inside me who just never had a voice,” he says. “It just allows me to be me.”
Taylor also recalled the first ever Slipknot show he ever attended before officially joining the band (which also happened to be the first Slipknot show ever).
“It was so many different things all at once,” he recalled. “It was visual. It was visceral. It was antagonistic. It was dangerous. It was powerful. I had never seen a band like that before.”
The program also interviewed fans of the band about what they dig about Slipknot’s masks, with one fan comparing them to “religion” and another getting awkwardly sexual about the whole thing.
Check out part of the interview with the two Masked Ones in the teaser clip below.
Watch: Slipknot On Why They Wear Masks – Artsnight Preview
