Original SLIPKNOT Vocalist ANDERS COLSEFNI Is 'Fine' With Not Being The Singer Who Actually Made The Band Famous: 'I Don't Have Any Regrets'

In a new interview with The Phase Remains The Same, original SLIPKNOT singer Anders Colsefni, who contributed lead vocals to the band's "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." record, was asked where he and his then-SLIPKNOT bandmates wrote the music that ended up becoming "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.". He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "In my basement, basement of a duplex right in the middle of Des Moines, with my upstairs neighbor constantly pissed off 'cause of the noise. Yeah, we wrote everything down in my grungy, little, tiny basement with everybody crammed in tightly, with carpet hanging all over the place, try to dampen the sound. It was gross."

Asked if he considers "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." to be just a "demo" or SLIPKNOT's first full-fledged album, Anders said: "Well, that all just depends on how you view things. Most of the time in the music world, if you get signed, your first album was a demo, and then when you get signed and get the backing, then everything goes on from there. But with as much time and money we spent on that first one, it might as well have been an album. I mean, it took over a year to do, a lot of arguing in between things about how things should go, and it just took forever. So I myself call it a full album. It's a full-length deal. It was recorded and engineered well, produced well, and mixed well, and comes out sounding really, really good. As far as I'm concerned, it's a full album. But it doesn't really bother me one way or the other if anybody says it's just a demo."

Regarding how many copies of "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." were actually pressed, Anders said: "The first pressing was 1,000, and then Shawn ['Clown' Crahan] had somebody from what's called -ismist Records that was willing to do a little bit of distribution. It was a small-time thing, but then they made up another 1,000, as far as I've been told, but it's nothing that I had my personal hand in. I was just told, 'Hey, we did this.' 'Okay.' So it might be 2,000 total that were made, but I'm not going to actually claim that's what it is. That's just what I think was done."

Colsefni went on to say that he wants to record a newly updated version of "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.", since he feels that the version of the album which was completed with New Zealand nu-metal outfit KAOSIS in 2024 was "a poor representation" of the original songs.

"We are looking right now to see what our legal options are with that, obviously. Corey [Taylor, SLIPKNOT's current singer] and Shawn sold their catalog to a different company last year, I think, and now trying to track down the new owners and find out if I have the ability to do any of that without legal backlash is something that we're still trying to figure out. But if I had my way, the guys that I've been performing with these first two [recent] shows [celebrating the 30th anniversary of 'Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.'], we would record all of them and make it available to everybody. I don't think we could actually draw any money from it, but it would be out there for people to be able to hear. Of course, it would be re-recorded with a lot of other people. But we're still trying to see where we're at with that, how things work out. I would love to do that, though. I would love to put out something with my guys recorded for real and not just everything computerized, and do it the way it should be done to allow the people that wanna hear it as close to the original as possible, a new recording of it."

Anders continued: "It blows my mind that this album that I was on is such a big, big deal, even at this time. It still kind of blows my mind. Thinking about it, it really was a demo because we were still all trying to figure out what our overall sound was gonna be. What we did on the 'Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.' album is different than what we started moving into in 'The Crowz' tracks [referring to a compilation of different post-'Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.' demo recordings with both Anders and Corey on vocals]. It started moving into a different feel and trying to be more along of the lines of something in a basket that could be understood easily. But I love all those songs, and I spent a lot of years not listening to any of them. I spent a couple decades just ignoring all of it and just trying to get through my own life and, and keep my own sanity about things. But just three years ago, everything got reawakened in me, and all of this stuff, at my age now, all makes a lot more sense than it might have done back when I was 24."

On the topic of the 2024 version of "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." which was recorded with KAOSIS, Anders said: "That was simply me getting a framework sent to me online and then me singing my vocals over it with the understanding that the original musicians were actually going to play their parts. But that's not what happened. It was all just done digitally, and that's kind of where that rift came through. So that was a communication breakdown of a major, major deal there."

Addressing the fact that he recently posted on social media that he didn't want his fans to give the 2024 version of "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." "any plays on any platform", Anders explained: "I keep seeing that green cover on Spotify and everything, and that's what really prompted me to make that post. From Palefest, I talked to some of the guys that we played with in Ohio. They had no idea that I didn't endorse that release, and they thought it was a poor representation, such as I do. And I cleared the air about that with those guys. And it's, like, what do you do about it now? You can't get it offline. It's just there. So I felt like I just needed to post, 'Don't listen to it.' You can find the original on YouTube or anywhere. You can listen to the whole [original] album right now if you want to just about anywhere. You just can't own an actual copy."

Asked how the "Crowz" compilation ended up being recorded with Anders and Corey sharing lead vocals, Colsefni clarified: "Well, 'Crowz' wasn't me and Corey recording anything together at all. It was just after we'd submitted 'Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.' to Roadrunner, they wanted to hear where we're going next. They're, like, 'Okay, this is a really disassembled group of songs that don't make any tangible sense together. Let's hear what direction you're going in.' So the 'Crowz' songs were us writing our next stuff. 'Me Inside', 'Prosthetics', 'Heartache And A Pair Of Scissors', which turned into 'Scissors', and a number of other songs, 'Crowz', 'Carve', those were our next offerings to Roadrunner. And the only reason why Corey's vocals are on any of them is because they brought him in while I was gone for a weekend with my family to visit my family in Minnesota, and had him come in and record vocals over mine or with mine. And when I got back, they sold it to me as, 'Hey, this is what's gonna work best. You're gonna do background vocals, and he's gonna do lead vocals, 'cause we need a lead man.' And I agreed with that. They needed somebody out front with a mic that's not beating on something else. And so, really, the 'Crowz' songs were really me first, and then they brought Corey in to redo them, and then sold it to Roadrunner so that they could get their record deal. And I have no regrets about it."

Colsefni continued: "I'm a death metal singer by heart, and they had the opportunity to go on and do what they're doing now because they were able to do some radio songs that nothing I would do was gonna get on a radio. I already knew that. But that wasn't what I was intending myself. But the fact that that ended up happening, while it ended up crushing my spirit for a little while, I was able to realize that I'm just one of a long line of original singers that weren't the ones that actually made the band famous. You can start with KORN, for one of them. And it took a little while, but I was fine with it. And I'm certainly fine with it now. I don't have any regrets. I only did what I could do based on what was going on at the time. And if it took bringing in a different singer to get a local band that I was part of out and make such an impact on history, I'm totally down with that. I'm not living the rock and roll lifestyle like all of them. I still have to work 40 to 60 hours a week and do all that normal stuff and try to fit my music afterwards, but that's what most people do. The majority of the musicians out there, that's what they're doing. It's only a select few that actually get the golden cup in their hand."

Colsefni also talked about PAINFACE, the band he formed in 1998, after leaving SLIPKNOT in September 1997. PAINFACE was renamed ON A PALE HORSE in mid-2001 and Colsefni left the band in 2003. In 2010, he decided to revive PAINFACE with a new lineup, and the group released its first two new singles in over a decade, "Welcome, Mother Of Death" and "Temple", in 2025. Asked what got him and the rest of PAINFACE back in the studio and writing again after so long, Anders said: "Me going on the road three years ago to do the ['Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.' tour] thing over in Australia, it just revitalized my life, actually. I was at a point, deep depression. I've had a couple surgeries, things that have really affected me personally, and for a while it was, like, 'I'm just done. I'm done trying to make anything work,' because it seems like everything I get started on, something comes along and derails it. Sometimes it's my own fault. But this time, I get back from New Zealand and I'm seeing all of these messages from people that wanna see this, and they just wanna know what's going on. So I'm, like, 'Okay.' … I got a lot of [those messages], and, like, 'All right, we're gonna do this.' And I got together with a group of people, I call it the 'MFKR Committee'. I am not allowed to make any decisions on it on my own. We're gonna go through a committee to determine anything that happens with anything 'MFKR' related, because we decided it's much bigger than myself. So, instead of leaving things to just me and my personal whims, and being a guy with ADD, yeah, that can jump around a bit. So, we got together and we put together really good people that really wanna see this whole thing succeed. People that have their own jobs, people that have their own businesses, that just are invested in this project. And when I started seeing that, it's, like, 'Let's get PAINFACE back together. Let's get PAINFACE back together. We'll play a birthday party in Las Vegas for our manager.' And we did it. We spent a month and a half getting this ready to go play, including a different drummer and bass player switching over to guitar player — just stuff like that, just to make that show happen. It's, like, 'Yeah, we're gonna keep doing this.' So, we went through a couple of lineup changes after that particular show and got ourself nailed down with a new drummer who is just amazing. We don't need somebody being able to play blast beats. We're not a super-fast band; we're a groove band. We like to keep that bounce in there, and people can still slam in the middle of it, believe me. But we wanted to keep everything realistic so that we can keep going with it, 'cause there's only so many drummers you can find and certainly none around here that can play blast beats all the time, so I can just go [growl on top of it], which I love that. But what we have is a style — I don't know, new death metal. I don't know what you'd call it since we popped out in '99, but it's got a groove. I'm focusing more on my death metal vocals nowadays and just wanting to just put out as much power as I possibly can — as much depth, as much screaming, but still keep some kind of a catchy hook somewhere. And those two songs we put out, we have a dozen more we're working on. A couple of more, maybe three or four, are ready to release. We're just not releasing them yet. And we're just gonna release them in pairs until we have a full album's worth done. It's a new world with the music industry. If you're doing it by yourself, you might as well get the music out as soon as you can. And we do all the studio stuff ourselves right now. Not that we wouldn't accept any kind of label help, but I don't know how much labels help anymore for bands like us. Everything's changed so much since I really had my fingers involved in it."

This past June, Colsefni celebrated the 30th anniversary of "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." at a special concert at Wooly's in Des Moines, Iowa. He was backed at the show by "a new group of old-school Midwest musicians" that he called THE CROWZ.

In October 2023, Colsefni partnered with KAOSIS to hit the road in Australia and New Zealand in a breakneck two-week tour dubbed "Numetal Mayhem". KAOSIS doubled as lead support and Anders's backing band, playing the "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." album in full. This record had not been played live since 1996.

In a 2023 podcast interview with KAOSIS frontman Xen, Colsefni was asked if he would be open to recording a new song with his former band if he was approached about it. He responded: "Yeah, absolutely. If they contacted me and wanted me to do something, yeah, why not?"

Asked to name his favorite SLIPKNOT song since he exited the group, Anders said: "To be honest with you, I'm gonna say 'Wait And Bleed', the very first one that hit right after I left. And it's the one that I would have thought that I would have hated the most, just because of my circumstances. But that song, when I heard it, I'm, like, 'That's it. I couldn't have done that like that. So kudos to you, guys.' So 'Wait And Bleed'."

Colsefni, Paul Gray, Joey Jordison and Crahan first performed under the name SLIPKNOT in April 1996 at the Safari Club in Des Moines. Not long after, Mick Thomson and Craig Jones joined the band and the trajectory of modern metal was changed forever.

SLIPKNOT erupted on the local metal scene and by October 1996 they delivered "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.". This LP became the foundation of what is now SLIPKNOT's three-decade legacy.