“I wouldn’t be able to play the technical stuff while wearing the mask. I’ve almost passed out a few times”: Slipknot’s original bassist Paul Gray on holding the middle ground in metal’s most extreme band

Since thundering out of the lonely Iowa plains in the late ’90s, the nine-piece masked metal symphony known as Slipknot have combined horror imagery, enraged vocals, intricate bass and guitar riffs, and punishing percussion, and turned it into a chart-topping success.

On the 2004 platinum album, Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), the fretwork of left-handed bassist Paul Gray on hits such as Duality and Vermillion created a mood of menace before building up to the inescapable fury of agonised choruses and wailing guitar breaks.

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