MFKR Bio
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Who would have ever believed that a band from Iowa, formed like an ordinary five member band, would grow to be a nine person onslaught of in-your-face, hardcore metal? Well, in order to understand, let's start at the beginning...

Slipknot started with Anders Colsefni and Shawn Crahan. Anders and Shawn hung-out all the time. They would play Werewolf: The Apocalypse (RPG) all the time (where much of the lyrics came from for MFKR). Anders was helping Shawn with some welding in his garage one winter, and they got to talking about it. At the time they were both drummers (Anders had been singing for a while), and wanted to put together a band with extra stand-up percussion. Shawn started out on a drum-set. Anders called Paul Gray (who was in L.A. at the time), and persuaded him to give it a try. They'd attempted to do so before, but Shawn got too busy, and it fell apart. But this time they were sick of the entire music industry as it was at the time, and so they got in touch with the very best musicians that Des Moines had to offer; the line-up included Joey Jordison (Paul's friend from the band Anal Blast) to play main drums, Josh Brainard at guitar (from Joey's other project Modifidious), and Donnie Steele, from Bodypit. The line-up for the time being was complete. The band's goals were apparent from the start that they weren't going to listen to anyone or let anyone come down to watch them practice cause they didn't want advice.

The band retreated to Shawn's basement to figure out their sound and how to improve musically. Slipknot's first show was actually under a different name, MELD. It was at a club, at that time, called the Crobar. They reformed without masks about a month or two after Josh got into the band ( mid to late Nov. 95'). That was the only show they'd ever done with Donnie. One day during practice, Shawn came with a clown mask that he'd owned for about 15 years, he said that it didn't just look cool but it, "helped with his aggression." The other guys in the band agreed and gradually everyone began wearing masks when they were playing. After molding together, they were ready to conquer the local Des Moines scene. The band admitted that at first it was hard to break through because they were playing at the Safari Club, a place for cover bands all week except Thursdays. Once a week the public was introduced to Slipknot, a metal Juggernaut that had the intensity to blow away all that witnessed. After writing a lot of new music trying to discover their path, the boys decided to enter the studio in 1996 to record Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. with local producer, Sean McMahon at SR Audio. MFKR was a very experimental album that ventured down paths that had never been explored by metal bands in Des Moines. The line up however got its first shakes when rhythm guitarist, Donnie Steele, departed after rumors of, "finding God." Craig Jones then replaced Donnie on guitar shortly after they finished recording. Their first show with masks had Craig on guitar, but that didn't last long. Craig decided he would concentrate on keyboards and samples to add a new sound to the band. They decided to bring Mick Thompson from Bodypit so Craig could concentrate on his new position in Slipknot. After all the recording of MFKR was complete, Mick and Craig helped out with the record and even managed to get their pictures in the record By the time MFKR was released, they had been in the band for a while and played heaps of live shows, none bigger than the local radio stations KKDM's Battle of the Bands in 1996. Ironically, they came up against the biggest band in town, Stone Sour, which included current 'Knot singer, Corey Taylor.

The band continued the onslaught of supporting their debut Mate.Feed.Kill.Repeat. According to ISMIST Records, Distribution, there were only 1000 copies of this made and distributed by the band as a promotional tool. The band distributed all but about half of the albums before passing on the rest and the responsibility of the distribution to ISMIST Records. The band looked set to be signed by a major label but Slipknot was all about playing what they wanted to play and had no real direction or structure. They decided that in order to make it into the market, they would need to restructure the band. In the summer of 1997, they recorded another record. It had many of the same songs as MFKR, but in an advanced form (the songs had sampling and Mick playing guitar). They finished it in a relatively short period of time, and it walked ALL over MFKR, production and performance wise. In order for the band to tighten up, Shawn decided to add Corey Taylor from Stone Sour to the band. Corey had a vision of a huge band that would "First, kill everybody, then total world domination would ensue." Slipknot played a few live shows with both, now former lead-singer, Anders and Corey sharing vocal duties. However, the addition of Corey meant that Anders would fall into back up vocals and percussion. Soon after, Anders decided to leave the band and go on to form, Painface. Things began to change rapidly. Before the jumpsuits, costumes were worn on stage. For example, Mick used to wear a rented Lil' Bo Peep costume. Now, the band wears red, blue, green, gray, white, brown, orange, and black jumpsuits with barcodes and their own individually assigned numbers.

Slipknot used to incorporate many different styles of music into each song. "Do Nothing/Bitchslap" goes from rock to funk to jazz and back to rock with disco in the middle. Now, the band sticks strictly to rock, while adding little elements of different styles of music for taste and texture here and there. Josh says, "We were actually preparing to release the updated version of MFKR when Corey joined the band, and that really turned things on our heads. We had Corey re-do the vocals, but right about the time we could pay for the recording time, we were headed off to Indigo Studios."

Corey's vision was quickly becoming a reality. They were planning to tour constantly in support of the album, even if it meant, "three times around the world." But the band had to fill Anders place of percussion, so Slipknot got in touch with friend and tattooist, Greg Welts (Cuddles). They also added DJ Sid Wilson to take care of turntables. Cuddles soon quit and was replaced by Chris Fehn at percussion. The band entered the Studio in October of 1998 for the initial recordings of "Slipknot." Once the songs had been recorded, Josh left the band. His reason for leaving was between Slipknot, and noone else. He didn't leave under bad circumstances or anything, it was all cool. Corey then got in touch with close friend, James Root, from Deadfront, to join the band in early 1999. He was present during the recording of Purity. Josh did rhythm guitar on all of the other tracks. The rest is all history depending on who you ask...








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