Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Rock Feed, Corey Taylor (Slipknot, Stone Sour) discussed the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on live music. Despite how bleak things look right now, the frontman said he thinks “we’re gonna see a real renaissance and explosion of live entertainment” when the crisis finally comes to an end.

Taylor said the following when asked how he sees live shows returning:

“It all depends on how we open this back up. You almost have to attribute it to the way that casinos are opened after — they do what’s called a soft opening, which is basically they open it before the grand opening and people wander through. It’s not packed, it’s not huge — you’re basically just seeing what people are going to be into and see if they’re into what’s being provided. That’s basically what they’re gonna do with this industry — there’s gonna be a soft opening; there are gonna be a handful of acts that go out there. They are gonna be the litmus test to see what the world is ready for.”

“It’ll probably be in smaller venues — ’cause people are gonna be fucking scared, man. Or maybe outdoor venues, where people don’t feel like they’re confined, they don’t feel like they’re too stuck together. There’s gonna be a sense of paranoia for a while — even after there’s a fucking medicine developed, or a vaccine. So it’s gonna take time. There is gonna be some acts that have to fall on the sword. If we do it right and we build that enthusiasm, probably within a year, maybe a year and a half, we’ll see the same enthusiasm for live shows that we did before. ‘Cause I think once people realize that everything is okay, people are gonna realize that they take for granted the fact that they haven’t been to a live show in a long time, and the live concert experience will be something that people come back to. They’ll be tired of watching it on YouTube, tired of watching it on their phone — they’ll want to be in the experience. So I think we’re gonna see a real renaissance and explosion of live entertainment. It’s gonna be great for us.”

He also added the following when asked if Slipknot would ever consider playing in a smaller venue once the pandemic subsides:

“I don’t know — maybe. It helps when it’s a room that long where we can get all of our crap in. That’s the problem — we’ve got so much crap now that we’d have to go back to Guitar Center and start finding shit that we can fuckin’… Like, ‘Clown, you take that kit and just Frankenstein it. We’ll just put it in there. No, you can’t shit on it.’ It’d be funny; it’d be insane.

We’ve actually talked about doing something like that for years — doing a throwback show, and doing a throwback show in a way where we wear the old gear as well. But that’s… I mean, I don’t know. That’s few and far between. We’d have to make sure that we could do it in a safe way, obviously. Not just from a coronavirus fucking standpoint. I mean, that would be insanity, dude. But we’ll see. It would be insane.”

[via Blabbermouth]