This is my third installment regarding this band. If you have read anything else I have written about them then you know how I feel. My long dormant metal spirit has been renewed to the point of crazed fanaticism. So without further ado, I bring you Slipknot's drummer, Joey Jordison, #1.

Okay, cool. Let's just dive right into this, how is this tour going?

#1 (Joey Jordison): Great! From city to city it's been awesome. It's been amazing since Ozzfest, before Ozzfest we had such a fanbase because of the tapes and the Internet and word of mouth. But because of Ozzfest and this tour we have sold in the U.S. over 200,000 copies of the record in three months, which is a world record for a metal band.

So Slipknot has the number one metal album right now?

#1: Yeah...it's quite an experience for all of us. We're actually very humbled by it and very thankful for it.

Mark [Teppo] and I were at Ozzfest and had no idea who Slipknot was. [Click here to read eP's live review of Ozzfest. --ed.] My friend Rob had dropped your name so we walked up the hill to check it out and we were both like @!^*Holy fuckin' shit*&$#@. Because we were there to see Slayer and Black Sabbath and weren't really expecting anything that brutally assaulting.

#1: That's what I was there for! You cannot beat that for a summer vacation!

#1: On that show, our percussionist Shawn (the clown) had to be rushed to the hospital because he split his eye open. He was slamming around and came down wrong and WAP!

How long have you been on this tour with Coal Chamber?

#1: For about four months, and it lasts another seven days or so.

And then what's up for you guys?

#1: We will take a week off, then go out headlining for a week. Then we go to Europe. Spend Christmas here and then back out on the road here in the U.S. headlining again.

What is the difference between headlining and being a support act?

#1: I like playing where we're at, I don't like headlining personally. But the band is just getting too big. So we will headline unless we go out with someone like Pantera, which we might be doing in January. Or say Tool, Deftones, Korn. Korn has a new album coming out and we would love to grab a tour with them, even though I don't like their new music much at all.

That would be a hot tour to be on.

#1: Yeah...because it's just so many people, and it's a crowd that we haven't necessarily hit yet. Right now we are the kings of the underground, you can't get much bigger than we are and still be considered "underground." So once we start getting tours with Korn we will start to become more known by the mainstream crowd. But when the next album comes out, I can promise that the music will not be diluted. We just want their audience.

Being such a physical band and having a live show that has so much movement involving nine guys, does coming off of the Ozzfest tour--where you were afforded a lot of room to move about--and put into smaller clubs like this seem to restrain you?

#1: Sometimes it hampers it. But every time we come off stage we look at each other like maybe perhaps that was good. We have played stages much smaller than this and still manage to go up there and create as much movement as possible. We find ways to do it, half the time we end up out in the audience just to create movement. The size of the stage has never been a problem, we're used to it.

#1: Oooh, I like it already.

Now upon following the Reaper out the door he turns to you and says, "Joey, we have a special deal for you, go grab five of your CDs and you can bring them with you." Which five is it gonna be?

#1: I'm going to Hell, so we need to party: Slayer, Reign in Blood. AC/DC, Back in Black. Merciful Fate, Don't Break the Oath. Fleetwood Mac, Greatest Hits. Depeche Mode, Violator.

Why Fleetwood Mac?

#1: My parents used to jam to it all the time. So it's been instilled in my head that that is what good music is. I've listened to it over and over and over, as a matter of fact I listen to it every night before I go to bed. A big fan of it I am.

There are a lot of bands right now doing the "Nu-Metal" thing. Korn, Deftones, System of a Down, etc. It seems like Slipknot definitely gets categorized in that same sort of thing. I'm not a fan of any of these bands, but Slipknot just absolutely fucking blows me away, and I think the reason why is that there is just so much more to Slipknot's music than the standard thing.

#1: There is a lot more substance and content. What I mean is you have a band that goes up there and rehashes the same mid-tempo, the same heavy riffage, basically the same song structures that everyone else uses. Intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus. All those bands do the same thing: guitar, bass, drummer, singer. All the components that I've just mentioned are what Slipknot stays away from. We have two guitar players, a bass player, three drummers, a sampler, a DJ, and a lead singer. Most of our songs we play more up-tempo and fast, and play a lot of that old-style metal and bring in a lot of that new-style genre of the way people perceive music and listen to it right now. We kind of mix those two styles and we play with different song structures. There are so many different elements within the music that it gives the music a lot more texture. We are all very skilled musicians and we have been listening to metal for a lot of years. We are so overly compulsive that we are always trying to take it to the next extreme. And a lot of people ask: "Why do you have three drummers?" "Why do you have these extra people?" We ask: Why not? Why always have a band of 4 or 5 people?

My question back to them would be "have you listened to the album?" Because the album is just so far sonically "out there."

#1: The emotion, performance and uniqueness of the songs is so thick on the record it's like you can almost reach out and touch it.

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