SLIPKNOT's COREY TAYLOR Teases New Mask

SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor has posted a picture of what appears to be the new mask that he will wear throughout the touring cycle for the band's next studio album. He captioned the Instagram image: "Soon... #thenewface #2019 #wanyk."

During a 2017 appearance on an episode of Viceland's "The Therapist", Taylor was asked about the significance of wearing a literal mask when he is performing with SLIPKNOT. He responded: "With SLIPKNOT, at least for most of us in the band, the mask is part of the art — it's not just the visual and the shock; it's a representation of who I am in that album. So, for me, it's as natural as having a different hairstyle for one album and tour cycle, wearing different clothes for an album and tour cycle. It's a part of the dynamic. It's one of the things that you look forward to. Not just writing the songs, not just putting the music together, not just putting the visuals together, but what… who am I in this album? And on the last album [2014's '.5: The Gray Chapter'], the one that dealt with Paul's [Gray, SLIPKNOT bassist] death, the mask that I had was two layers, so I could pull one off and there was another mask there. And it was the mask behind the mask — being open to a point, but never really sharing that pain. Even when push comes to shove, pulling that layer away, and it's still… there's still something behind it that I'm not willing to share. And that album, 'The Gray Chapter', was basically my way of processing everything and hopefully helping the band process it and putting it into perspectives that we can understand. It was me trying to give my friends a voice and letting them know that I was with them and that things weren't gonna be okay, but we were gonna move on."

Corey spoke about the changes in the SLIPKNOT bandmembers' masks in a 2014 interview with Metal Mania Radio. "With every album, some of us have evolved our masks more dramatically than others, but there's always a difference, they've always changed a little bit, and ['.5: The Gray Chapter'] is no exception," he said. "I mean, I think mine and Clown's and Sid's have changed the most, because it's evolution."

He continued: "This band evolves with every album, and it just makes sense that our masks [would as well], because we're not the same people. It's not something that we sit down and we talk about as a group, we just kind of do it. As unified as we all are, the mask is really something that we trust each other to do individually and we trust them to do the right representation."

This past October, SLIPKNOT released a new song called "All Out Life". The track will appear on the band's upcoming follow-up to ".5: The Gray Chapter" album, due next year via Roadrunner.