Slipknot on Darkness, Anger, Addiction Behind 'Iowa': "We Almost All Died"

Below, the major players behind Iowa look back on the album that, according to Slipknot's Shawn "Clown" Crahan, nearly killed them all.MONTE CONNER, SENIOR V.P. OF A&R AT ROADRUNNER RECORDS Everyone thought they were gonna make the wimp-out record and become mainstream. When I first heard it I loved it, but as a label guy I thought, What are we gonna do with this?JIM ROOT It was an angry time and the songs reflected that. It just made more sense to come out with all this aggravation and brutal shit.JOEY JORDISON We discovered that doing a Slipknot record is fucking prison. I'm in a band with the best musicians in the fucking world. When we did Iowa, it was a very dark time for the band. It's a time I don't like to talk about much because I don't like to condone any drug use, whatsoever.CHRIS FEHN We had all worked really hard before, but now we're partying harder and we got a little bit of pocket change and we can afford certain drugs that we couldn't before. It got weird and I didn't think we were going to be able to hold it together.COREY TAYLOR I didn't meet my dad until the tour cycle for [Slipknot's 2004 album] Volume 3: (The Subliminal Verses). I was in a relationship that wasn't good for me and I didn't want to realize it at the time. Going into the record, I started doing lines of coke all the time and writing music doing lines. But I think we could have spent more time at home relaxing and putting it together more as a band.ROSS ROBINSON, PRODUCER I broke my back in a bike accident, which was really perfect for the album because Slipknot were experiencing huge success and going out every night and not showing up in the studio on time. Let's get it the fuck on." That seemed to work.SID WILSON Ross got hurt and he'd still come back to work hurt. He was in a wheelchair all fucked up and in pain and you could hear him screaming in pain while he was producing the album.TAYLOR I just remember a lot of darkness, a lot of anger. I'm laying on this crystal table going, What the fuck am I doing? What else do you need?CRAHAN Best time for me was when Sid was a little out of control, wouldn't get his shit down. The sunshine from the first album was totally gone and it was a total eclipse for a very fucking long time.JORDISON Our manager at the time, Steve Richards, did a lot of good things, God bless his soul. The dude just stepped into our lives and tried to cause rifts between band members because, as long as you've got them occupied, you can be raping them and stealing from them and they're not noticing because they're too caught up in stupid shit to see a bigger picture.TAYLOR There was a lot of screaming and a lot of animosity, and that's one of the big reasons we went and [restarted] Stone Sour. I'd got fucked up and tried to make it through the night. I did a lot of drugs, and there were a couple nights where I'd wake up on the bathroom floor and not know if I was gonna see tomorrow morning.Sign up to get the latest from Revolver, straight to your inbox.Copyright © 2019 by Project M Group LLC.