Artist

Slipknot

Des Moines, United States

Slipknot is a music group from Des Moines, United States. Their discography on Gatefold includes 19 records.

Start your shelf →Open in app

Albums tracked

352

In collections

—

Since

Biography

Slipknot is an American heavy metal band formed in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1995 by percussionist Shawn Crahan, vocalist/percussionist Anders Colsefni (Andrew Rouw) and bassist Paul Gray. After several lineup changes in its early years, the band stabilised with nine members for more than a decade numbered by 1998 - 2010 number system: #0 - Sid Wilson; #1 - Joey Jordison; #2 - Paul Gray; #3 - Chris Fehn; #4 - Jim Root; #5 - Craig "133" Jones; #6 - Shawn "Clown" Crahan;

The Arc of Slipknot

The pivots — what forced Slipknot to reinvent.

The Ross Robinson Pressure Cooker
Producer Ross Robinson hauled nine furious kids from Des Moines out to Indigo Ranch in California to bottle live, unhinged violence. The resulting 1999 self-titled debut stripped away standard nu-metal sheen in favor of Joey Jordison's breakneck blast beats, scrap-metal percussion, and Corey Taylor's throat-shredding vocal delivery. Tracks like 'Eyeless' and 'Spit It Out' collided death metal precision with drum-and-bass breaks and hip-hop cadences. It went platinum without radio play and completely upended mainstream heavy music.
The Iowa Breakdown
Heavy touring and deep internal hatred brought the band to Sound City in Van Nuys in a state of absolute ruin. Instead of softening up for commercial radio after their breakout, they channeled their mutual contempt into Iowa, one of the bleakest, most punishing major-label metal records ever pressed. Joey Jordison pushed his tempos into straight black metal territory while Corey Taylor tracked vocals through real blood and open wounds. It debuted at number three on Billboard purely off unfiltered aggression.
The Rubin Reinvention
Facing burnout and addiction, the band decamped to Rick Rubin's allegedly haunted Houdini Mansion in Laurel Canyon for Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses). Rubin pushed them to drop the expletives, integrate acoustic guitars, and write massive melodic hooks without sacrificing the twin-guitar riffing of Jim Root and Mick Thomson. Singles like 'Duality' and 'Before I Forget' alienated extreme-metal gatekeepers but turned the group into a sustainable, Grammy-winning arena juggernaut.
The Gray Chapter Rebuilding
The sudden 2010 death of founding bassist and core songwriter Paul Gray, followed by the contentious split with drummer Joey Jordison, forced the remaining members to completely rethink their operating model. They recruited bassist Alessandro Venturella and drummer Jay Weinberg, heading into Sound Factory in Hollywood to track .5: The Gray Chapter as an explicit eulogy. The record traded some of the polished arena-rock hooks of All Hope Is Gone for raw grief, mid-tempo groove, and dark atmospheric interludes.

Influences

Faith No More — Corey Taylor and Joey Jordison routinely cited Mike Patton's boundary-pushing vocal dynamics as a direct inspiration for Slipknot's chaotic shifts between singing and screaming. You hear Patton's manic, unhinged phrasing all over Taylor's rapid-fire delivery on tracks like 'No Life' and 'Scissors.' They proved you could combine heavy down-tuned guitars with strange rhythms and zero genre loyalty.
Sepultura — Producer Ross Robinson tracked Sepultura's 1996 record Roots, which directly informed the tribal percussion setups that Shawn Crahan and Chris Fehn beat on stage. Slipknot lifted the idea of integrating dense auxiliary rhythm sections into low-tuned thrash metal. The opening grooves on 'Sic' and 'Prosthetics' borrow heavily from Max Cavalera's down-tuned, percussive wall of sound.
Slayer — Paul Gray and Joey Jordison were thrash obsessives who built Slipknot's foundation on the blinding tempos and dual-guitar precision of Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman. The speed picking on tracks like 'Surfacing' and 'Disasterpiece' is straight out of the Reign in Blood playbook. Slipknot just laid down-tuned groove and samples on top of classic thrash speed.
Mr. Bungle — The band openly took cues from Mr. Bungle's self-titled 1991 debut, particularly their early stage presence involving masks, clown outfits, and sudden genre collisions. The weird, carnival-like samples and abrupt tonal lurches across Slipknot's early demos trace straight back to Trevor Dunn and Mike Patton's weirdest experiments. They took that avant-garde madness and weaponized it for festival crowds.
Skinny Puppy — Slipknot didn't just lean on metal; sampler Craig Jones and turntablist Sid Wilson took heavy inspiration from industrial pioneers Skinny Puppy for their dark sound design. The eerie ambient loops, distorted speech samples, and mechanical noise laced throughout '742617000027' and 'Tattered & Torn' come straight from late-80s industrial tape manipulation. It gave their brutal rhythm section a cold, mechanical horror backdrop.