Corey Taylor has posted behind-the-scenes photographs of a mold of his face being made to make his new SLIPKNOT mask. Taylor is working on the mask with special effects legend Tom Savini, whose extensive career in the film industry and particularly the horror genre dates back to the late 1970s, incorporating into such movies as “Friday The 13th”, “Dawn Of The Dead”, “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn” and numerous others.
Taylor told the “Let There Be Talk” podcast about his new mask: “I had the privilege this time around, the new stuff that I’m working on, to work with Tom Savini. He’s the godfather to me. Got to hang out with him, got to talk with him. Met him through a friend who actually works with him. And the three of us were kind of developing this new mask together so I’m kind of fuckin’ chuffed on that.”
The singer additionally uncovered that the band’s crew is entrusted with dealing with the covers after each show. He clarified: “Everything is gonna start to deteriorate after a while… We try to get as much of the moisture out of it as possible, because that destroys the latex and whatnot. But we also have people who work for us, who actually take the masks at the end of the night and make sure they’re dry and they’re put away and then they’re brought out to get air into them.”
Taylor shared that he shows his old covers on styrofoam heads and has been offered “serious cash” for them. The vocalist posted a photograph tease of his new cover in late December and you can hope to see a greater amount of it when the new SLIPKNOT album arrives later this year.
Amid a 2017 appearance on an episode of Viceland’s “The Therapist”, Taylor was gotten some information about the significance of wearing a literal cover when he is performing with SLIPKNOT. He reacted: “With SLIPKNOT, at least for most of us in the band, the mask is part of the art — it’s not just the visual and the shock; it’s a representation of who I am in that album. So, for me, it’s as natural as having a different hairstyle for one album and tour cycle, wearing different clothes for an album and tour cycle. It’s a part of the dynamic. It’s one of the things that you look forward to. Not just writing the songs, not just putting the music together, not just putting the visuals together, but what… who am I in this album? And on the last album [2014’s ‘.5: The Gray Chapter’], the one that dealt with Paul’s [Gray, SLIPKNOT bassist] death, the mask that I had was two layers, so I could pull one off and there was another mask there. And it was the mask behind the mask — being open to a point, but never really sharing that pain. Even when push comes to shove, pulling that layer away, and it’s still… there’s still something behind it that I’m not willing to share. And that album, ‘The Gray Chapter’, was basically my way of processing everything and hopefully helping the band process it and putting it into perspectives that we can understand. It was me trying to give my friends a voice and letting them know that I was with them and that things weren’t gonna be okay, but we were gonna move on.”
Corey talked about the adjustments in the SLIPKNOT bandmembers’ veils in a 2014 interview with Metal Mania Radio. “With every album, some of us have evolved our masks more dramatically than others, but there’s always a difference, they’ve always changed a little bit, and [‘.5: The Gray Chapter’] is no exception,” he said. “I mean, I think mine and Clown’s and Sid’s have changed the most, because it’s evolution.”
He proceeded with: “This band evolves with every album, and it just makes sense that our masks [would as well], because we’re not the same people. It’s not something that we sit down and we talk about as a group, we just kind of do it. As unified as we all are, the mask is really something that we trust each other to do individually and we trust them to do the right representation.”
This past October, SLIPKNOT released a new song called “All Out Life”. The track will show up on the band’s up and coming follow-up to “.5: The Gray Chapter” album, likely due this summer by means of Roadrunner.