Existing Interviews with bands in magazines.
Whatever Corey Taylor ends up doing in 2011 this year just past will echo loudly. Slipknot's legacy and potential comeback, Stone Sour's mutation from alt.rock contenders to genuine superstars in their own right... both his bands underwent huge transformations in the 12 months just past, so we caught up with the ever-chatty singer to talk the past, future and family.
What's been your favourite moment of 2010?
“I guess watching the success of the single ‘Say You’ll Haunt Me,’ because that was a song that the record label didn’t even believe in at first. They said it was an album track at best. Then when we recorded it, it became something really fucking special, like ‘Holy Jesus Christ!’ and I was like ‘Yeah, fuck you.’ So it became Number One for like six weeks in one chart, a Number One in another for three weeks, again Number One in something different. It also climbed other charts and that’s fucking fantastic. To me, that shows everything we’ve worked for in Stone Sour, and it’s a great moment.”
Who's been your favourite new band of this year?
“A band I got into a lot over this past year was Mumford And Sons. That band are really fucking different and that’s why I like them so much, and I’m sure people will read this and go ‘Woah they’re not a fucking metal band!’ but seriously, a lot of metal bands they all sound the same. I don’t give a shit about the same; I want something that’s going to touch me. They’re doing really well as well at the moment too, the fuckers.”
Out of all the shows you've played this year, which one will you remember longest?
“Now this is a hard question, because Download 2010 was off the wall. But I also just played a sold out show in front of 13,000 people in Birmingham where we closed the night, and everyone sang so loudly that my in-ear monitor wasn’t working. I couldn’t hear myself, I was like ‘Is it broken?’ I couldn’t hear myself, and that was from the sheer volume of the audience. And the whole run we’ve done with Avenged Sevenfold has been fantastic. I mean Glasgow and Manchester, they were rammed! Somebody threw a shoe at my face [in Manchester], and I caught it in Matrix mode and threw it back. It was fun and I’ve been blessed with a lot of great shows this year.”
What do you think has been your greatest achievement this year?
“Keeping my kids alive for another year is a huge thing. I mean, if you’re going to be a father you worry about that. The book I’ve written [on the Seven Deadly Sins] was completed this year and the album 'Audio Secrecy' was written. That’s such a great album and it was an achievement because in many ways it’s a big departure from anything I’ve done before. A lot of people may not like it, but fuck, it’s what I want to do. I’ve been doing this professionally for 12 years now, my whole life, and there’s no ceiling on it yet. It’s still growing. Stone Sour are getting new fans in all of the time too and that’s my greatest achievement not only capturing the imagination but still putting out quality music and challenging myself in the process to make the best quality music I can. I can take those few more steps towards immortality and so 2010 as a whole year is my achievement.”
We caught up with frontman Oli 'Oliver' Sykes for a bit of a chinwag over egg nog and mince pies. Ho ho ho!
You had a pretty storming 2010 - what are the band’s plans for 2011?
“Well, we’re already booked up until the end of next year, so it’s just touring, basically. We’re going to more weird and wacky countries; I know we’re booked to play Indonesia and we’re going to try and get as to as many places as possible. We’ll kick off a European tour because we’ve not had a chance to get over there this year since the new album [came out], then we’ll be doing our biggest ever UK tour. Then we’ll be doing European festivals and playing Japan, just going and playing this album to everyone and anyone who wants to hear it.”
What specifically do you want to have done by this time next year?
“Like I say, we don’t really have goals and ambitions. I mean, if the band stays at this level, or even if we dropped [a level], I’d still be happy. I love what we do: it’s the best thing in the world. We’re forever being surprised by what’s happening around us and I think that if we started setting goals, then if we met them, it would be like, ‘Yeah, well I expected that,’ and if we didn’t we’d be bummed out. We started this band to play shows and we want to be in this band to tour the world. For me it’s not work: it’s like being on holiday most of the year. As long as this band keeps taking us around the world, then I’m happy.”
Who are your favourite new band of 2010?
“It would have to be a band called Turboweekend. They’re relatively unknown in England. The only reason I know of them is because the guy who did our artwork [for ‘There Is A Hell…’] and who directs our videos, Jakob Printzlau, is from Copenhagen and he directed videos for this band too. They’re so fucking good; they’re one of my favourite bands of all time. I can’t really explain to you what they sound like, you probably have to go and check them out; I can’t think of any words to describe them. I think they could be huge if they had the right people behind them, someone to say, ‘listen to this.’ We went to see them in Copenhagen when we were recording in Sweden and it was fucking amazing.”
What was your favourite album this year?
“Have you heard the band Sleigh Bells? I checked them out because it’s the guy from Poison The Well [Derek Miller] on guitar and this girl [Alexis Krauss] singing and I was like, ‘what’s this going to sound like?’ It’s kind of fucked-up electro. Again, hard to put your finger on; really nice vocals, catchy as fuck, but then heavy, weird riffs. So yeah, [‘Treats’] is my favourite album of the year.”
What was the best moment of 2010 for you personally?
“Fuck, probably Warped tour. I don’t go on the internet or on forums so I don’t know how our band does anywhere. Even in the UK I never know how shit’s going because we’re out and about everywhere, [but] when we came to America [for Warped], the reactions were just absolutely insane. We were getting bigger crowds than bands like All American Rejects, who have sold millions of records! It was so unexpected to be playing on the main stage with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Every Time I Die, who are bands that influenced us and made us want to be in a band. The whole vibe of Warped Tour is just so good. You play a show for 40 minutes, you hang out in good weather, have barbeques, get drunk: it’s such a good laugh. That’s been the highlight of the year.”
Inside layout examples.
Most of the people decided they prefer the original picture to put the interview over as my double page spread. finding this out i shall use the original picture.
Something that would have been good to edit on this picture is the shadow of the lamp that is visible in the background, done professionally this would have been edited out, unfortunately the software I used was not able to do this.
This is the first page of my double page spread. I decided to make a contrast with colours on this one, the red with the black and white, and the really white on the grey. I think this works well, I also noticed in my research that it is important to follow a set colour scheme in each article so that it doesn't look messy and is easy on the eye. The reason behind these colour choices is that red really stands out on white.Something I noticed about interviews in the magazines I looked at is there are many ways you can set them out. one way is: on a double page spread to have a picture of the band/artist in question taking up half of it with only a little amount of text, and then having the interview on the other side. I followed this, and chose to put the text over another picture of my artist, I think this worked well, however when doing this you have to get the colours of the text just right so that the text is readable over the picture and you can still work out what the picture is of.
