GRIFFIN TAYLOR Plots 'World Domination' For VENDED

By David E. Gehlke

Featuring vocalist Griffin Taylor (son of SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor) and drummer Simon Crahan (son of SLIPKNOT percussionist Shawn Crahan),VENDED is one of the first heritage acts to emerge from the nu-metal era of the late 1990s/early 2000s. Yet, according to the younger Taylor, their famous SLIPKNOT fathers are not used as a career launch pad for VENDED but instead have opted to let their sons figure it out for themselves. Whether the band will be able to tap into SLIPKNOT's rather sizeable audience remains to be seen. (They have, however, played Knotfest and will do so again this fall.) In the meantime, their first shot at carving their own path has arrived in the form of a self-released 13-song, self-titled, full-length studio album that is due later in September.

Playing a hybrid form of nu-metal-on-modern metal with the occasional extreme metal burst, VENDED perhaps best falls within the targeted audiences of CODE ORANGE, LOATHE, TALLAH — and that band from Iowa with nine masked members. Appropriately, Taylor and his bandmates have set their goals high, namely, "world domination," words that the frontman wasn't afraid to throw around when BLABBERMOUTH.NET snagged him for a chat.

Blabbermouth: You spent a few years in the basement working on songs and coming together as a band. What was it like?

Griffin: "First off, it was pure goddamn degeneracy. It was nothing but a bunch of teenage dudes doing what teenage dudes do—being insane, being insanely crude to each other and having a fun time. When it came to writing the songs, it was very easy for my bandmates to experiment with each other and get on the same level as each other. It was really easy for them to write a song out of nowhere. For me, it was very hard. Again, this was still back when I didn't know how to write a song. It was really hard for me to know what I wanted to do or, how I wanted to sing or what I wanted to sound like. Eventually, after some teaching from my bandmates, I started getting into a groove and got to a point where I could write a song on my own and accept criticism and get their opinions and be like, 'I don't like this bit.' I'd be like, 'This is why I did this. Let's see if we could do something different.' It eventually became an easier work ethic to understand. It's like riding a bike, where you get used to it through muscle memory."

Blabbermouth: As a general question, what did the band learn about itself during these years?

Griffin: "I'd say we learned to trust each other and we learned that it's better to have a bad idea and run with it than have a good idea or to have an idea and not do anything with it. No matter what, whether someone thinks it's a bad idea or someone who isn't even in the band thinks it's not a good move, at the end of the day, it's better than doing nothing. We do our very best always to realize that we're not right the first time and that's a creative hump that a lot of people forget to get over. For me, as a writer, the first thing that I write isn't going to be the last thing and ninety percent of the time, it's not going to be the right thing that I'm trying to say. Usually, I'm trying to fill in the blanks. We found out what we wanted to sound like and what our overall voice was going to be, but we also learned how to properly take the good with the bad and figure it out all in between."

Blabbermouth: You did a fair amount of screaming and clean vocals on the new record. Do you remember the moment when you figured out that you could do both?

Griffin: "The whole singing part — clean vocals — I learned I could do that way back when I was a kid watching musicals, listening to music and doing overall mimicry. Doing choir, barbershop quartet, all that stuff. Eventually, leading into doing tougher stuff, like growling and screaming, it took me breaking my voice and wearing my voice out to where I could barely talk and letting it heal like a muscle. I realized that I could scream and do gutturals and growling that wasn't the kind of mid-ranged, kind of growl/kind of screaming that I did during our EP. The moment that I realized I could do it and I knew how to perfect it and get it to where I was comfortable was during 'Overall' and 'Ded To Me'. Those singles were us properly in a recording studio, and I had a lot of time to truly not only mature and age but also to properly hone my craft on how I wanted to sound. Having all the proper equipment — headphones and a proper mic to record, it was really easy, like 'Oh! I can do this?'"

Blabbermouth: Do you want to explain the rationale behind self-releasing the album? Did you pursue record companies? Were you pursued?

Griffin: "We wanted to do it self-released because we wanted to stay independent. We didn't want our work to be under someone else's name. Obviously, we did want to have people around who helped us get here and people who gave us that sort of nudge to the point of releasing an album and music. We didn't want our sound to be owned by something that didn't create that sound. Now, that's not badmouthing record companies. That's not shit-talking companies who genuinely help bands and do good by them and make sure that not only are they well paid but also taken care of in terms of getting music out. But it's mainly just a sort of personal preference that we don't want our music to be owned by somebody and that hinders us in the long run. We want to not only be free creatively and not be told what something should sound like, but we also want to reap the benefits of our creation more effectively rather than just, 'Here's your cut.'"

Blabbermouth: Did your dads give you any advice?

Griffin: "Kind of. Our dads didn't really teach us or mentor us over all of this stuff. They pretty much gave us the tools in order to do something, but they left us to do it for ourselves. They weren't going to do it for us. They were going to give us the proper tools in order to do something, but it was up to us to take action. Overall, wanting to be independent was our idea. It was something we've always been talking about and always been in our heads: 'We don't want to be owned by somebody. We don't want to be somebody else's circus.' We want to be our own circus with partnerships."

Blabbermouth: Are your dads sounding boards at this point? Are they around when you need them?

Griffin: "Not really. Simon and I do talk to our dads. We fill them in on what's happening. There's no string-pulling here. There's no, 'Oh. Let me do something.' It's our job to take matters into our own hands. They don't really do something for us other than give advice when we ask for it. It's not like they're throwing advice at us every other fucking day of the week. It's overall conversation and just being a father, in general. Letting your kid figure it out for themselves, but also being, 'Here's what I think about this.'"

Blabbermouth: You're likely to be asked a lot about them during this promo cycle. It sounds like there is a clear line.

Griffin: "There's a clear line between doing it for somebody as though it's your project and overall just being a dad and being like, 'You're going to mess up and we want you to be safe. We're going to give you the tools to do something. It's up to you to use those tools effectively. We're not going to do it for you.'"

Blabbermouth: VENDED comes across as a hybrid, but you'll invariably be labeled as nu metal. Is that okay with you?

Griffin: "I mean, we don't care what you label us as. Label us as a nu-metal band, a heavy metal band, a shit band — we don't give a toss. All of us have our own idea of what our band is. And I think of ourselves as a metal or heavy metal band, which is just 'over-genre-fication' if that's a word. It's a generalization of said genre. Other than that, yeah, we have our own opinions on what we call our band. If you want to call us a 'nu metal band,' sure. We disagree with you, but we could see why you think that because it does follow the nu-metal trend of old shit mixed with new shit. We mainly take it into the old shit that we love and what we want to do. Sometimes we put a little bit of new shit into it without forcing change."

Blabbermouth: Will you read the reviews when they come out? Are you ready to read them?

Griffin: "I'm going to be fucking honest with you: I stopped giving a shit when I turned 20. [Laughs] I stopped caring once I turned 20. Even once I turned 21, once I was able to buy alcohol, I got to the point where I was like, 'I'm not going to drink my feelings away over this shit.' It's like, don't cry over spilled milk. People are going to be assholes. People are going to have their opinions and that's okay. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean that something doesn't deserve to exist. Just because you are a fan of a certain sound and just because you don't like a certain band doesn't mean it should disappear because there are people who like this band. I follow a certain philosophy in life: As long as it's not hurting anything or no one is being abused and no one is being harassed and no one is dying, leave it alone. It will be fine. It's not going to hurt shit. People are going to be assholes over the internet. That's nothing new. At some point, you just got to be like, 'Don't wait for the stupid. You'll be crying all day.'"

Blabbermouth: Has it been freeing to not worry about these things?

Griffin: "Curiosity always kills the cat. I do find sometimes scrolling through my Instagram and finding one hateful comment. It does sometimes get into my head, but it's due to my anxiety, depression and self-loathing. At the same time, my band and I have talked about this several times. My friends have always brought this up whenever I'm feeling anxious over that shit and they're like, 'The one thing everyone does is always look for that one comment or handful of comments of people being dicks and tearing something that you created up.' You ignore all of the love and support you're getting. You completely ignore all the people going, 'Yeah, you got this.' You focus on the bad because we are our own worst critics. If someone reinforces that idea, 'Oh, maybe what I created isn't good.' Then, eventually, we start to believe they are true and start to defend ourselves because we don't want something we put our time and/or effort into to be deformed into something it's not. At the end of the day, just ignore the hate and take the love where you can get it. There's not a lot of love left out in the world. There are way too many hateful human beings left."

Blabbermouth: Do you want to talk about the roadwork you plan on putting in for this record?

Griffin: "It will be back to our regularly scheduled program of world domination. We're getting back on the fucking grind. Getting our shit together and going out and taking over, as per usual."

Blabbermouth: You've brought up "world domination" in other interviews. Is that the underlying theme with VENDED?

Griffin: "It's sort of the first phase, yeah. It goes back to change: Things will be different, but right now, because we're still new and because we're wading through the water, world domination isn't going to leave our brains until we're 30. We're still out here trying to save as many lives as possible and build our army to the point where we'll always have people on our side. Hopefully, we'll inspire others not to let others or family bloodline hold you back from doing something that you know you love."