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Rarely since the fiery crash of Buddy Holly's plane in 1959 have the words "Iowa" and "rock and roll" been used in the same sentence. As we've come to know it, Iowa means corn, livestock, conservatism, and precious little else. And like a thousand other landlocked heartland nowheres, it brims with kids dying from boredom, and with small-minded politicians trying to keep their little slice of Americana quaint, quiet, and soul-crushingly sterile. But the kids aren't all right - they're getting pissed. And in Des Moines, their rage has a name: Slipknot. Naming a significant musical identity from the state is inarguably a fruitless task; it simply can't be done. However, nine freaks from Des Moines--draped in industrial coveralls, surrealistic self-made masks, and an attack that combines violently regurgitated "L.A. neo-metal," death metal, hip-hop, and downtuned screeching horror--are about to leap upon the unsuspecting world like a musical of Clockwork Orange. Have you ever thought about what a messed-up hardcore metal band from "the middle of nowhere" would sound like? "Ultra-violence" only begins to describe it...you could call Slipknot equal parts style and substance. You could also call it payback time for Middle America. Each comes equipped with not only a frightening visual persona and number assignment, but a talent on his particular instrument that combines and collides to form the nine-headed savior/destructor of modern heavy music dubbed Slipknot. Now, with the tools and talents (not to mention complex-yet-infectiously-catchy songs) that this band holds in its grasp, the world has no choice: Slipknot has arrived, and you must now decide how to deal with it. In a recent Alternative Press cover story, drummer Joey explained the band's vitriolic attack this way: "All of us were so used to having the middle finger thrown at us, that when we finally threw it back, we did so with ten times the venom." And they hit a nerve in the process. Slipknot's self-titled Roadrunner album is nearing platinum status. Their home video, "Welcome to Our Neighborhood," has dominated Billboard's Top Ten since its release, and is already platinum. But that's just America. Australians have made the album gold and the video platinum, and the band continues to sell out gigs there - and throughout Europe and Japan too. Even grumpy old England -- notoriously intolerant of heavy American rock -- has chimed in with a Silver record and New Musical Express' declaration of Slipknot as "brilliant." Similar accolades can be found within recent cover stories in Alternative Press, Circus, Guitar World, Hit Parader and Metal Hammer, and the band has also been featured in Kerrang!, Metal Maniacs, Rolling Stone, and Spin, among others. To top it off, the tune "Wait and Bleed" (which the band performed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien) has lately been rotating on MTV, KROCK NY, KROQ LA, LIVE 105 in San Francisco, WHFS Washington, DC, KNDD Seattle and so on. The video for the single has been officially added to MTV as well. Surprised? Don't be. From the skull-pummeling "Sic" and unforgiving bludgeon force of "Surfacing," to the sublime melodicism of "Wait and Bleed," to the entrancing percussive drive of "Prosthetics," Slipknot's Ross Robinson-produced Roadrunner CD swarms with such dense instrumentation that you'd swear it was a whole symphony of sickos in command. And you'd be right: Slipknot is made up of nine native Iowans: DJ Sid (#0), drummer Joey (#1), bassist Paul (#2), percussionist Chris (#3), guitarist Jim (#4), sampler Craig (#5), percussionist Shawn (#6), guitarist Mick (#7), and vocalist Corey (#8). Nine guys, each with his own gruesome visual persona AND dehumanizing number. Sounds like a lot? Percussionist Shawn wouldn't have it any other way. "Our music is so reliant on each other that if one guy is gone, it just wouldn't be our songs. Without one person, something is really, really missing. Everybody has to be present. Even the littlest things make our songs magical." And it is about the songs, after all. While some visually oriented bands forget about that, the beast that is Slipknot, with its virally infectious sense of melody and explosive, percussion-driven backbone, knows its priorities well. Just as striking visually as they are musically, Slipknot stresses that the visuals do not take precedence over the music. "We never put on the shit we wear to try and get people into us," says Joey Jordison. "We did it because, after being degraded constantly for trying to play music or do something in Des Moines, it just came to be like we were an anonymous entity. No one gave a fuck, no one cared, so we were never about our names or our faces; we're just about music. So we just put it on and it started gettin' people, and it just started to turn into this big thing. The music's the most important, though. The coveralls and masks happened, and for some reason it worked, therefore we had to kind of continue with it. We got stuck with it." Now that they're stuck with it, they hardly feel like themselves without it. Shawn feels that "...the masks are extensions of our personalities. Everybody's got sort of a tweaked, demented way about themselves, and we just alter the masks over time. It feels really, really good when we wear our masks for an hour, and then afterwards we take it off, and the first thing we do is go, 'God, what a relief!', but we always seem to put 'em back on after a show and walk around the place." And the visual presentation will change over time, just as the music certainly will. "I think things will always be changing with Slipknot. Everybody grows older every year, and with that you change, and that's somethin' Slipknot is always going to do." As for the number assignments they wear on their coverall sleeves, they're lucky numbers, significant and vitally important to each member. When choosing them, "Everybody fell into a number," says Shawn. "There was not one person in the band arguing over a number. It was really weird." Thanks to a hefty Ross Robinson production job on Slipknot, Slipknot's vision, part one, has been successfully realized. Shawn feels that Robinson was as highly motivated to work on the record as the band was to work with him. "We're a highly, highly aggressive band, and very seldom do we meet people who are in the realm of our aggressiveness when we play as a unit, and Ross took us into the recording room and was throwing punches at us. He was into it. Ross got up every day and went and worked out so he could be in shape to do our album." When label reps and Robinson himself came to Des Moines to check out Slipknot at their best (on stage), the members were left with little to do for after-show entertainment than go to local strip clubs. After hosting guest after guest, the band was completely burnt out. Now, nobody in Slipknot ever wants to step inside a strip club again (it's Des Moines's leading form of entertainment, incidentally). Shawn grunts in disgust: "Fuck the strip bars. Fuck taking anybody to strip joints. We got shit to do." The "shit" is wrapped up in a pretty little package called Slipknot. It's the discordant sound of the middle of nowhere, a terrain where Slipknot is jester and king... Which brings us full-circle in a way. Because, in actuality, there was one other strange incident besides Buddy Holly's death in which "Iowa" and "rock and roll" could be uttered in the same breath before Slipknot: January 20, 1982, when Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat during a gig in Des Moines. "We got the whole thing about the bat right in us," recalls Joey. "When we were little, we kept hearing about this guy named Ozzy biting the head off a bat. That was here in this town, and we've had a little bit of the bat in us ever since." The heaviest band around could have no better teacher. And indeed, as Slipknot moves from a slot on last year's Ozzfest to the headline act at this summer's Tattoo the Earth tour, one thing is clear as crystal meth: Corn ain't the only thing growing in America's heartland. Consider yourself warned, planet earth!

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