
Yesterday, August 5th, Zane Lowe named Slipknot‘s new single “Birth of the Cruel” as his World Record on Apple Music’s Beats 1, and he had lead singer Corey Taylor on his show to break down the song as well as the Nine’s forthcoming album, We Are Not Your Kind, which is due just a few more days from now, on August 9th. Taylor also discussed the familial dynamics in the band and the group’s new mystery percussionist, who some fans have nicknamed “Tortilla Man” or “Tortilla Face.”
Asked by Lowe what someone has to do to become official as a new member of Slipknot, the singer quipped, “You’ve got to wear the Tortilla on your face first of all, and the audience has to figure out who you are. Tortilla face. He’s doing great. He’s a great dude and is killing it, man. It’s kind of cool. It’s brought this whole new energy to everybody as well. So it’s a lot of fun to watch him.”
Speaking of the camaraderie within the group, Taylor referenced the recent death of Shawn “Clown” Crahan’s daughter Gabrielle and how the band members dealt with the tragedy. “As far as the OGs in the band, we’re all closer than we’ve ever been, to be honest. Especially dealing in the wake of, unfortunately what happened with Shawn,” he said. “We all rallied around him hard, because people were coming at him. Just another symptom of the dark side of social media. People were coming at him and we just basically … I won’t even get into it because people are gutters, some people are garbage eaters. And the fact that they were coming at my man was wrong. So we all circled around him basically, we circled the wagons. We said, no, you’re not going to do that. And that kind of showed us all that we were still really close. We were still brothers, you know.”
Listen to the interview and check out the remaining dates of Slipknot’s Knotfest Roadshow tour below.