Slipknot will be releasing their fifth album, .5: The Grey Chapter, on October 21st. It will be the band’s first album without Joey Jordison, who was unceremoniously fired from the band last year. While the new drummer hasn’t been named yet, we have our ideas (spoiler alert, probably Jay Weinberg). At any rate, in a recent interview with Metal Hammer, the magazine asked Corey Taylor about Jordison’s exit from the band. Taylor, of course, played coy and didn’t say anything blatant about the member change:
I can’t talk too much about it because we’re going through the legalities of everything right now and settling everything, but it’s when a relationship hits that T-section and one person’s going one way and you’re going the other. And try as you might to either get them to go your way or try and go their way, at some point you’ve got to go in the direction that works for you. This is me speaking in the broadest terms, with respect to Joey. I guess to sum it up, it was one of the hardest decisions we ever made. We’re all happy right now and we hope that he is. I’ve known him since ’91, and that was before we were in bands together, and he’s incredibly talented; he’s just in a place in his life, right now, that’s not where we are… in the nicest terms.
Metal Hammer thought that sounded like Taylor was referring to drug use, and asked him point blank. Given that he’d just pointed out that he couldn’t say much legally, Taylor vaguely continued on:
There’s only so far that I can give an explanation. For me, that has to be a sign of growing up, because before I would’ve just railed at whatever I thought the supposed evil was, but now it’s like, how do you explain to the fans? And that’s the hardest part, because no matter what explanation you give, it’s not gonna make them happy. I’m sure there are fans out there who have their own theories about it.
Taylor says he hasn’t spoken to Jordison in a while, which is understandable. When you break up with a girlfriend or boyfriend, you probably don’t want to see them for a while. “We talk about him all the time, but at the same time, do we miss him or do we miss the old him,?” Taylor says. That definitely suggests that something’s going on. Of course Jordison has his own side of the story, which isn’t represented in the article. He’ll defintiely break the silence when he can. He’s proven himself to be a great drummer, so it’s a matter of time before he pops up in another band or project.
