For more than two decades now, Slipknot have been taking their beloved maggots (AKA their die-hard fans) for one hell of a ride. Now that trip continues as they celebrate the 25th anniversary of their self-titled debut with their Here Comes The Pain tour and the unveiling of nine new mask. "The fact of the matter is the band's been together 25 years next month, we consider that the day the album came out," founding member Shawn "Clown" Crahan tells PAPER. ”Myself, you know, I was sort of jammin' with it since ‘95. We have been around a quarter century, almost half of my natural born life. [We’re] pretty honored that in 25 years, our music, lyrics, our vision, love, all that came.”
As part of the celebratory jaunt, the band decided to present a fresh aesthetic. "There's a lot going on right now in the world of Slipknot,"Clown says. "[If] I’m putting on exactly what I wore 25 years ago, I think it'd be insulting to who I was 25 years ago and for the people that knew that, and there is no way in this reality I can be that human being again, I just wouldn't be true. We all agreed to do takes on how we are and what we feel, and that’s the inspiration … to take the past and make it the present for the future. To acknowledge oneself, and to literally make people happy by familiarity and turning it up a little bit. I’ve never had a zipper in my clown mask and that’s one of those staple things I put in the band when it was starting I was incorporating zippers a lot. It’s inspiration from the past, but it’s also talking about oneself right now reminiscing, the pain, the sorrow, the love, the work of that 25 years of that character that we been that's been requested, and sort of like say a prayer almost, to oneself to bring something out, that feels real for everyone."
For Slipknot, the 25 anniversary is also a reminder of their perseverance back when “every magazine, every video interview everybody who was on the fence, for whatever reason wanted to believe that we weren't going to last.” “They wanted to believe that the masks and coveralls and all this stuff that I made was supposed to end us right?” Clown says. “But secretly, we're just sitting there like, ‘Are you guys crazy? Have you not heard our music?’ Our music is serious. It's Slipknot, it's serious music. There's no other music like it in the world. It's not a game. It's not a gag. You don't need all the stuff to just have the music. And you don't need the music to have all the other stuff. That's the trick. [That’s] what I’m trying to reiterate here, and I have been trying to reiterate this for over 25 years."
Photography: Jonathan Weiner
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