What Gave Away V-Man’s Identity in Slipknot

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The members of Slipknot are far from anonymous behind their masks. 

However, when bassist Paul Gray passed, the Knot wanted to keep the identity of their new bassist under wraps for .5 the Gray Chapter.

Now that we know Alessandro ‘V-Man’ Venturella’s identity has been revealed, he has a pretty good idea what gave him away.

When speaking in an interview for Heavy, Venturella knew that the tattoos on his hand would have outed him saying,

I mean, once you’ve seen my tattoos, it’s pretty obvious who it is. And then there was also a good grace period of six months where I just disappeared off the face of the planet. And I was getting messages. I couldn’t tell anyone what I was doing. I was, like, ‘I’m just away at the moment.’ I think it kind of got pieced together pretty quickly.”

Despite the secrecy, Venturella talked about going the extra mile to hide his identity when filming the video for ‘The Devil in I’ saying,

“I remember saying, ‘Should I put some black tattoo gloves on or something like that?’ And they were, like, ‘Ah, no one’s gonna get it.’ And I was, like, ‘Okay.’ If it’s not gonna be called out by a fan, it’s gonna be called out by someone in a teching position or someone from another band going, ‘Oh, that’s fucking Vman.’”

Once Venturella was called out by fans, Corey Taylor seemed to take it in stride saying,

“I was like, ‘Aw, man. C’mon.’ The funny thing is, I was doing a radio interview and I was laughing about it. It just goes to show you, in this TMZ world, people are gonna pick up something just so they can make a story out of it. It would be nothing for me to make an argument out of it, but at that point it was like, ‘Man, who gives a shit?’”

Regardless of how Venturella was welcomed into the band, he’s become a core part of the Slipknot family. 

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