In 2009, Corey Taylor almost joined Anthrax. The band was having some serious vocalist issues that ultimately led to Joey Belladonna returning to the fold full-time in 2010, but in the year prior the gig almost went to Corey Taylor.
Taylor has said in the past that he was really close to joining the band full time. In a new interview on Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian's new SiriusXM show Never Meet Your Heroes, Taylor went into detail on what went down exactly, as transcribed via Blabbermouth:
I remember Charlie [Benante, Anthrax drummer] getting super stoked and sending me stuff. And I was starting to write lyrics. And then it all went to hell.
I was literally getting ready to fly to Chicago to meet up with you guys. And here comes [Slipknot manager Cory] Brennan, here comes some people from Roadrunner, and it was, ‘You can’t do this.’ And I’m, like, ‘What do you mean I can’t do this? I mean, we’ve got half an album.’ I was so pissed, dude. I was, like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And, basically, they strong-armed me, because they wanted the new Slipknot album, which, at the time, I was about the only person who could really kind of rein everybody in, to get them going; it was a very strange time. But they weren’t gonna let me do it; they just straight-up weren’t gonna let me do it. And I just remember… even before I called you guys, just sitting in my kitchen and just being so downtrodden, just crestfallen, because I had looked so forward to everything. And the whole thing that I just kept saying was, ‘I’ve let you guys down.’ I thought Charlie was mad at me for the longest time.
Ultimately, Taylor felt everything happened for a reason as he was a big fan of Anthrax's output since then and Slipknot finally got their shit together and recorded a phenomenal new record as well.
But can you imagine how cool it would be to see Anthrax fronted by Corey Taylor?
