Corey Taylor fills big halls around the world with the heavy metal band Slipknot. As the frontman of Stone Sour, which he founded, the 49-year-old shows a more melodic side and is extremely successful with it.
But two own bands and regular guest appearances with other artists are still not enough for the versatile singer and songwriter from Des Moines, Iowa. Taylor has now made a name for herself even without an accompaniment.
“The main reason why I started as a solo artist is actually that I already did almost everything on my own at Stone Sour,” says Taylor in a Zoom conversation with the German Press Agency in London.
“I didn’t really get to do what I wanted, but I was still expected to do most of the work, with no corresponding reward, no trust in my musical decisions. That really frustrated me, so I thought, Now I’m just doing my own thing.”
Singing to the sound of a mandolin
Taylor’s solo debut “CMFT” is now followed by “CMF2”, a very colorful album on which the jack-of-all-trades, who counts David Bowie and Prince among his role models, lets off steam musically. Already on the opener “The Box” he surprises when he sings to the sound of a mandolin. The first two singles from the album are completely different: “Beyond” is a fat hard rock song with a catchy, melodic chorus, “Post Traumatic Blues” is a heavy metal album with brutal Slipknot-style vocals and double guitar harmonies.
“It’s cool to play around with hybrids like this,” says Taylor, who is joining us from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he is sitting on the tour bus. “You have the double guitar sound of Thin Lizzy or Iron Maiden, but then you combine that with this really cool, almost punk style that we have, and all of a sudden it creates a whole new music that people might not even know about “We knew it would work. There are simply no restrictions for us.”
Band members close friends
It is noticeable that Taylor mostly speaks in the plural, even though it is about his solo career. “One for all, all for one” is the motto. “For me it’s definitely teamwork,” said Taylor. The band members are close friends. “They know that I make the decisions. But even though I write most of the songs, everyone knows that I give them creative freedom.” The climate in his own band seems to be much better than in his other groups, where there has often been drama in the past.
The fact that the restless musician enjoyed the recording of “CMF2” cannot be ignored in conversation. “Man, we had so much fun with this album,” enthuses the singer, who is blessed with a great voice. “We went into the studio and were totally nerds again. It was just amazing.”
The diversity is considerable. Be it a pop-punk anthem like “We Are The Rest” or the radio-friendly, soft piano ballad “Someday I’ll Change Your Mind”, which is followed by the aggressive metal monster “All I Want Is Hate”, which takes some getting used to. follows – “it’s all us,” Taylor clarifies. “I try to find something I can appreciate in every genre.” The singer and songwriter has an excellent feel for ballads in particular. The wonderful “Breath Of Fresh Smoke” is one of the strongest songs.
“Take people for a ride”
He says it was important to him to record an album as a whole, not just a collection of singles, as was the case with its predecessor. “The first album wasn’t good enough for my taste because it was just throwing songs together,” he says. “There was no direction, no journey, it was just really cool songs that were fun. On the new album I wanted to take people on a ride.”
The recordings for “CMF2” were so productive that there will be a follow-up soon. Corey Taylor reports that 26 songs were recorded in a short time. The album contains 13, and he plans to release the other half next year. Following his ongoing North American tour and a festival appearance with Slipknot in Mexico, he will also be coming to Germany in the fall. Two concerts are planned in Cologne and one in Berlin in November.
