Since the release of their eponymous debut studio album in 1999, and the even more hellacious follow-up Iowa in 2001, the music and masked musicians of metal band Slipknot have resonated with irrefutable musical defiance for millions of “maggots,” as their fans proudly call themselves, the world over.
It all started in Des Moines, hometown of founding members Shawn Crahan, a percussionist better known as Clown, and bassist Paul Gray. Slipknot played its first show with current lead vocalist Corey Taylor on Aug. 24, 1997 at the Safari Club in Des Moines; today, the venue houses Lefty’s Live Music.
“The performance is pretty bonkers, featuring an emcee in a ski mask, someone tossing out stuffed animals and a spray of sparks that begins once the band starts playing. And from there the band rips into three minutes of explosive energy and pummeling rhythms, as Taylor growls through his mop of hair and X-ed out eyes,” Revolver Magazine describes the performance, which is on YouTube. The comment section is full of maggots noting none of the current band members look or sound quite like themselves yet — except Clown.
In 2009, Crahan began responding to a quieter artistic muse when the nationally acclaimed Des Moines Moberg Gallery agreed to curate an exhibit for him at the Hotel Kirkwood. This was an immersive experience featuring a variety of synergistic artists, all centered around Crahan’s acrylic-on-canvas paintings, framed photography, prints and Polaroids — many of the latter featured in his 2012 photo book The Apocalyptic Nightmare Journey. That year, Crahan also appeared in his first feature film, Darren Lynn Bousman’s The Devil’s Carnival.
Crahan directed a concert film in 2015, Day of the Gusano, documenting Slipknot’s first concert in Mexico City. (“Gusano” means “maggot” in Spanish.) This other-disciplines creative flow seems to keep feeding itself back into his work with Slipknot.
The band’s most recent album The End, So Far was released in 2022, just as COVID had firmly locked out maggots from the visceral realism of an in-person concert. Slipknot’s tour schedule has now resumed, with shows in Europe and Australia taking them into 2025.
The basics and each band member’s bond to each other is what continues to drive Slipknot into their next quarter century of creativity. As Crahan said in 2017, “I’m only listening to the other guys in Slipknot, and we’ll make what we want with our middle fingers in the air.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s December 2024 issue.
