The worst kept secret in metal has to be the identities of the two new Slipknot members, drummer Jay Weinberg and bassist Alessandro "Vman" Venturella. We figured it out basically when the masks were unveiled.
But it seems like Corey Taylor is giving up the charade on a recent episode of Chris Jericho's podcast. Jericho asked Taylor how the two were doing in the band and Taylor was all praise:
"[Touring with the new members has] been killer. It's been really, really good. It's been cool to watch them come out of their shells too. Because, at first, they weren't sure how far to go. I mean, that's the respect level… They're so respectful and they dig what we're doing so much that they don't wanna cross any boundaries. But they're having a really good time. So we were, like, 'Let's step it up. It's time. It's time. Start to get into it.' And Alex, our bass player, he's so into it that he's started to kind of come up to the front, really started to own it. Jay's just started to take it up. And, yeah, man, it's been really good. So every show has just gotten consistently better and better and better. Last night, we hadn't played in seven weeks, and we went on stage and, I mean, we could stop on a dime. It was incredible! And I'm talking about three songs that we hadn't played live — we had just rehearsed [them] a couple of times — and, dude, it was on!"
Taylor revealed when they auditioned Weinberg, they didn't even warn him ahead of time!
"We were sitting down trying to think of what to do next. And I can't remember if it was Clown [SLIPKNOT percussionist Shawn Crahan] or [SLIPKNOT manager Cory] Brennan. They sat us down [and were], like, 'You've gotta see this video.' 'Cause we all knew Jay, 'cause he had been coming… We would see him backstage with his dad. [We would say], 'How are you doing? How's everything going? Oh, you're playing drums? Cool. Keep it up.' And Joey was a huge influence for him. So, all of sudden, we start seeing these videos of Jay playing, and we were, like, 'Whoah!' So, what we did was we booked a studio — and I won't go too much into the background of it — we booked a studio, we didn't even tell him what it was about. We just told him… We weren't even the ones telling him. We just told him, 'Be at this place with a set, at this time, for an audition.' And then we all walked in. And [he was, like], 'Huh. Huh. Ehhhhhh…' And we started going through tunes, and he knew every tune. The ones he didn't, he knew half of it. It was insane. And that's how that started."
As for bassist Alessandro "Vman" Venturella, his recruitment came much later as the bass tracks on the new album were recorded by guitarists Jim Root and Mick Thomson:
"[The way] Vman [came into SLIPKNOT] was a little different [from the way Weinberg did], because we had a couple of people that we were looking at and that we had actually worked with, and it just wasn't vibing. Nothing against them technically — it just wasn't vibing. And I think Jim was actually the one who said, 'For now, let's bring Vman in. He can handle it.' 'Cause the dude is a ripper. A lot of people don't know that. We met him through MASTODON, so we've known him a long time, and Jim knew just how good he was. So he came in, and he just started handling it. And he's so easy to hang out with. He's such a great dude. And it just got better and better and better and better and better. And the question got brought up towards the end of the album. It was, like, 'What are we gonna do live?' And we were, like, 'What do you mean? He's coming with us.' It was a slower burn for him, because we had tried a couple of other people. But it worked so well that it was just, like, 'Okay, this is it.' And then it was trial by fire, 'cause now you're jumping out of the airplane. The first gig was Knotfest in front of 25,000 people. That was their first gig. But it came off, man, and it's just gotten better. It never gets easier, but it's gotten better."
You can hear the episode below:
[via Blabbermouth]
