Slipknot - Vermilion

We’re rolling with the big boys this week! If you haven’t heard of Slipknot, I’d wager you’ve been in a particularly deep sleep for quite a while now or living under a very boring rock. They’ve been tearing it up for nearly three decades now as the band from Des Moines, Iowa that your mother warned you about; masks, pitch-dark themes and lyrics and stage shows that would give church-goers in a ten-mile radius heart palpitations. They’ve got theatre in equal measure to absolute battering-ram force and I’ve got a great deal of time for pretty much all of their releases. Who in their right mind wouldn’t? Other than most people’s mothers, I guess.

The band has been in the news pretty much every week since their inception, for reasons ranging from their lyrics and themes to a lawsuit about a Burger King advert (seriously, look that one up, it has to be seen to be believed); there might as well be a separate page on Wikipedia for their controversies over the years. However, you might have most recently heard the news of the sad passing of drummer and founding member Joey Jordison, who left the band in 2013 in what were, let’s say, confusing circumstances at the time. Dying at age 46 is a bullshit way to go for one of the great drummers of all time, metal or not, so this week’s track is a bit of a dedication to the impact he had – not just on me and my developing taste in music and interest in playing instruments personally, but the whole damn genre. Raise a glass and raise the volume!