Corey Taylor: "Stop Whining And Put Your God Damn Mask On"

For the past 20-plus-years, Corey Taylor and his Slipknot bandmates have been donning some pretty heavy-duty masks onstage, in music videos and even during long press junkets.

And while founder and percussionist Clown has previously admitted, “There’s not a day that doesn’t go by that every member wishes we didn’t have to wear that stuff,” the Iowa titans have nevertheless soldiered on for the sake of their aesthetic. And now, frontman Corey has complained that some people can't seem to put on a much smaller and easier-to-wear face covering while they hit the shops – as they are supposed to – during the coronavirus pandemic.

Read this: Your favourite Slipknot masks revealed

Speaking on Triple M Rock in Australia (via Music Feeds), Corey was asked if he had a message for those who aren't abiding the by the current mask laws in Victoria (which is simply: “All Victorians must wear a face covering when they leave home, no matter where they live”).

“…Stop whining and put your god damn mask on,” was Corey's response. “This isn’t an isolated incident. My country’s loaded with these dumbasses that think it is some sort of political standpoint or some sort of partisan garbage. And I’m just like, ‘Are you serious?’ Just because you haven’t had anyone in your life affected by it doesn’t mean that it’s not a real thing.”

He continued: “I once had to wear a full head mask for eight hours while doing Slipknot press. Eight hours straight – didn’t take it off, but these people are going to bitch and moan about wearing it for 10 minutes at the market? Get over yourselves.”

A couple of years ago, Kerrang! asked Corey about his favourite ’Knot mask to wear – but the frontman joked that, “They were all fucking horrible.”

He explained: “The hardest was my original with the dreads. Anything that’s full-headed – there’s just no getting out of it. At least when you’ve got some kind of a half-mask with buckles, you don’t feel like you’re singing in a portaloo. But when it’s closed, you just put this big rubber hood on and there’s just no getting out of it.

“So that one and the Iowa one, because they were basically variations of the same thing,” he continued. “Those were the worst. The Iowa one was foam rubber. The ones from the first album were thin but then we got a little money and we were like, ‘Wow, let’s make some cool shit for the Iowa run!’ They used foam rubber, which was basically just like giant sponges.

“You could tell where we were at in the show by how big my head was getting and how heavy this thing was…”

CMFT is out on October 2 via Roadrunner Records – get your copy here.

Read this: 10 of the best Corey Taylor guest appearances