[Chance Trahan & Corey Taylor – Portland, Oregon – 2000 – Roseland Theater – 3AM]
This NuMetal band started out with big dreams in a little town in Des Moines, Iowa, and just as the band had hoped, Slipknot quickly became a phenomenon of its own. Their members have gone through several lineup changes with rotating members over the years. The first singer, Anders Colsefni, was the first one to be recorded, and before too long, they had an album titled Mate, Feed, Kill, Repeat. However, this album would only be a demo of what was to come, and Anders would ultimately not be a part of the final product. After the band decided on a new singer, some of the members approached Corey Taylor, and Joey asked Corey if he’d join their new project as the lead singer. Corey agreed and they recorded new demos, and those demos would be the launch of what was to come for the next couple decades. Slipknot shocked the town of Des Moines by wearing halloween masks on stage and playing outrageously heavy metal music. Their sound would captivate people everywhere all across the world, and they were often compared to bands like GWAR and Mushroomhead. Some would even say that Mushroomhead inspired their use of masks on stage, and while that could be true, Slipknot would seem to take their band much farther and ultimately become much more profitable than the latter (Odds are that you might know who Slipknot is, but never heard of Mushroomhead).
Slipknot started making way onto the scene for most of their fans in 1999 with the release of a three song demo featuring the songs Spit It Out, Surfacing, and Wait and Bleed. Fans would pick up this free demo in the record stores and show these songs to their friends.
I had heard their songs on a mixed tape while playing video games with friends, and I kept asking who that band was. Their sound was different and grabbed my attention every time a song would come on within this mixtape we were listening to. - Chance Trahan
The band Slipknot started a tour around the United States, and Chance saw an opportunity to check them out live, and so he took it. While he was at the venue, Chance had walked by the unmasked members of the band in the front lobby of the Colorado Springs Music Hall and didn’t even know it, the lobby was packed with lots of people excitedly chattering about. Slipknot at the time was a band made up of 9 masked men, and there was no way of knowing that they were the members for sure without interrupting the ongoing conversations. Plus, Chance didn’t want to ruin the surprise of seeing the band unmasked before seeing them perform live. Slipknot had a band by the name of The Color Insane opening for them.
The show was wild to say the least and Chance’s most anticipated song to see Slipknot play live was Purity. When the show was through, Chance had found Jim Root signing autographs and introduced himself and mentioned that he wanted to tour with them. Jim asked Chance what the band name was, and at the time, he was in a two piece no-name band that just had him on guitar and singing, while a friend of his named Miles was drumming. He explained this to Jim and Jim told him to contact them when he had the band together, however, the band would never come to be like Chance had hoped. After his conversation with Jim, Chance walked outside to tell his friends that he had just met the guitar player. While he was in the parking lot with his friends, a strange guy was desperate to meet the band, and asked Chance to introduce him to them, but the conversation hadn’t gone as Chance had hoped, and the strange guy creeped him out, so Chance decided that something felt off about him, and so he changed his mind. When they went back to the other side of the parking lot, the stranger got into his car, blared some Slipknot, but felt resentment about not getting to meet the band, hastily backed his car out and rammed it right into Chance as Chance was getting down to the music.
Chance got extremely lucky that only his elbow was hit by the sideview mirror due to his roommate at the time, TJ, pulling him out of the way as fast as he could. The whole thing put a huge damper in the vibe and Chance was escorted by his group of friends away from the guy. The stranger had apologized and acted like this was a freak accident, but everyone knew exactly why that had happened and no one was happy with his bad form. The tourbus was not well protected at the time, and quite frankly almost anyone could have walked up and asked to meet someone from the band, but the guy in question just didn’t see things that way and did what he did regardless. Slipknot continued to tour and was now on their second US tour with metal acts: Mudvayne and One Minute Silence. After meeting a guy and a girl in an AOL Slipknot chat, Chance decided to take the risk of leaving Colorado Springs to pursue another shot at meeting the whole band.
Slipknot was playing in Portland, Oregon this time and this was back in the year 2000. After waiting around til 3AM for everyone to leave, Chance took advantage of the opportunity to sneak in and meet the band. But, when he first arrived early before the show, Chance had the opportunity to get autographs on a huge fold out of the cover of the Des Moines local newspaper cover that featured Slipknot across the whole page from founding drummer Joey Jordison and Stone Sour guitarist Jim Root. The two band members had found surprise and amusement in the cover page that Chance had brought, and to them, this was a trip down memory lane. The lead singer from Mudvaye, Chad Gray, also made an appearance before the show started at this time as well. Chance had never heard of Mudvayne and had no idea who he was, but knew that he looked pretty punk rock and like he was important. The idea was to convince someone to allow him backstage, but they had absolutely no wiggle room and no one would budge.
After sneaking backstage after the show at 3AM, Chance was adorned by Jim Root, who was hitting on a girl at the time. He met up again with Joey Jordison, and after a brief reintroduction, Chance asked to meet with Slipknot’s singer, Corey Taylor. Joey asked to hang out for a second before grabbing him off the tour bus, and so Chance Trahan took the opportunity to ask questions about the album’s inlet artwork. Chance asked Joey if a picture of what looked like Corey on a cadaver table was related to the song Wait & Bleed, to which Joey denied, however– said was an interesting analogy. After their brief 10 minute conversation, Joey felt it was time for Chance to meet Corey. Corey Taylor comes out of the bus and this is the moment Chance had been waiting for. Everyone backstage was amazed to see Corey in person, no one knew what to even say to him, except for Chance.
“How’s Jump Da F*** Up with Max from Soulfly turning out?” Chance asked. Corey replied with, “The song is already done, and it sounds awesome.” Chance wasted no time in asking him to make a song with him, to which Corey said, “Let’s do this.” The song has still yet to come, but Chance still plans to make it happen and things seem to be in the works. The band and him parted ways after their encounter, and Chance would carry on to see them at least two more times in Las Vegas, Nevada. The last time Slipknot was seen in Vegas, they were playing at House of Blues inside of Mandalay Bay casino & hotel. Chance again had taken it upon himself to sneak in by the tour buses and this time he met their DJ, Sid and even watched him get a tattoo at a shop not too far from the venue. When Chance made it into the tourbus area, he was greeted by Aaron Zilch from the band American Head Charge who saw him sneak in. It was also Aaron who would take Chance to the tattoo shop where Sid would then get a tattoo of a crescent moon on the inside of his arm. Chance was just excited to be hanging out and much to Sid’s dismay, he had unknowingly had made disturbances for Sid while he was trying to not flip out while he was getting his new tattoo. After the tattoo was finished, Chance had a rare opportunity to speak with Sid and show him some of his lyrical work, to which Sid would compliment his lyricism and would even take notice of the artwork that is Chance’s handwriting. With another idea to attempt yet again at reaching out to get Corey’s attention, Chance gave Sid the sheet of lyrics to give to Corey with his phone number on it, but Corey would never call while Chance still had the phone number active. It would turn out that this was not in vain. Based on events that transpired, Corey had felt inspired by Chance and would seem to keep tabs on his whereabouts and what he was working on, and this became evident when Corey had written lyrics that were shockingly similar to what Chance had written. Winning song ideas would come to him on a whim and writing great lyrics was effortless to Chance and he took this as a compliment at first, then felt resentment when he could actually prove it was true. The similarities were too blatant to not notice.
At one point, Chance had threatened to sue Corey of what he considered theft of his work. However, Chance would stay poor, never succeeding at any kind of progressive profiting from a job and would never be able to afford legal representation over the years. He would continue to live through many of the following years as if he was left with a bad taste in his mouth. Eventually Chance would more recently get over the negative situation and would privately offer a truce with Corey Taylor, as Chance Trahan felt that their friendship and a progression towards writing a new song with Corey, as he had promised, was more important to him than living with the feelings of resentment. Corey wouldn’t respond to the message, but, you could see the relief that Corey would feel in his most recent posts on his Instagram. The difference was like night and day, as if no more negative darkness would be hovering over Corey’s aura. The situation between them would grow darker and darker over the years, so the change in the offer that was on the table was a welcomed shift for them both, as they could now move on and focus on what’s important to them in their own lives. Chance Trahan is now running for President of the United States, and Corey Taylor just now dropped a new album called We Are Not Your Kind.
With the death of Slipknot bassist, Paul Gray, fans saw a change in Slipknot that had some of them jumping off the band wagon. Chance immersed himself into the stories surrounding Paul’s death, and this soon turned into an unhealthy obsession of trying to figure out what happened to Paul. The story didn’t make sense, and Chance couldn’t shake the fact that the band he had grown to love was now not the same. Inside his mind, he was constantly pointing fingers at everyone involved trying to get to the answers like this was some kind of See n’ Say toy he was winding up and hoping for it to land on the answer he was seeking. The story not making sense had driven him crazy. After seeing and reading interviews of Paul’s wife at the time, Chance decided to take it upon himself to try and message her. Upon messaging her, she accepted his request. Chance had asked her a handful of things, and the situation had gotten a bit outlandish for them and the conversation soon came to an end. Chance would later drop any kind of an investigation into the situation and feel like the answers would come to him some day, just not that day. But to satisfy your curiosity, Paul’s death would turn out to be nobody’s fault.
Even more recently, founding Slipknot member and drummer, Joey Jordison would find himself ejected from the band with conflicting stories about what really transpired that fateful day being released to the press. Joey would claim that he had not quit the band, and the band would claim that Joey had in fact quit. Joey had later come out in public and released the following statement at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods awards ceremony in London while accepting the annual Golden God award:
“I want you all to give them [Slipknot] praise. We accomplished a lot and I wish them nothing but luck and the best of praise. Toward the end of my career in Slipknot I got really, really sick with a horrible disease called transverse myelitis. I lost my legs. I couldn’t play any more. It was a form of multiple sclerosis, which I don’t wish on my worst enemy.” -Joey Jordison
The frustration on both accounts was palpable to say the least, but things would still work out in the end, as Joey would later carry on and start a new band named Sinsaenum. Sinsaenum is a supergroup comprised of many heavy metal acts from different bands and different countries. The following was taken from their bio….
Frédéric Leclercq, virtuoso bassplayer of London-based Power Metallers DRAGONFORCE, and JOEY JORDISON, formerly of SLIPKNOT and currently of VIMIC, have revealed details of their collaboration on an exciting new project, SINSAENUM. Having worked on some material that owed more to Death Metal than the Power Metal of his day job as far back as 1998, Fred had long been concocting a plan to put together an extreme metal project. Having secured the involvement of STÉPHANE BURIEZ, a French scene icon with LOUDBLAST for 30 years, it was only after an unexpected message from the US when things began to really take shape. Fred explains: “Joey Jordison sent me an SMS to ask what I was up to, so I told him about those death metal songs.” After the former Slipknot drummer had heard the demos, he wanted to know whom Frédéric had recruited to beat the skins. As there was nobody yet, he eagerly suggested adding his own ferocious style. Joey also had the idea for the name SINSAENUM, a fitting combination of the words “sin” and “insane”. When it came to choose a voice for the trio’s godless tunes, it actually ended up with two, the main criterion being “death metal with a clear enunciation.” The first was no other than ATTILA CSIHAR from Norwegian black metal legends MAYHEM and drone masters SUNNO))), another long-time acquaintance of Leclercq’s and Jordison’s, notorious for his many registers ranging from tortured screams to throat singing. Sean Zatorsky from NWoAHM titans DÅÅTH and CHIMAIRA became the other vocalist. With another countryman of Frédéric’s – Heimoth, the brain of eclectic extremists SETH – completing the picture on bass, the material for SINSAENUM’s full-length was rounded off and perpetuated at different places. The end result is titled “Echoes of the Tortured” and was mixed in Fascination Street Studios in Örebro, Sweden, where Jens Bogren (Opeth, Kreator, Devin Townsend et al.) put the finishing touches to 21 tracks that are – in one word – expansive.
Much to Chance’s surprise, Corey Taylor came out with a book called Seven Deadly Sins, where he would admit to several things that were never discussed in any of the interviews with him that were available at the time. The things Corey would admit to battling with Suicide, an Alcoholic Addiction, and being abused by someone he trusted.
