No one going into a Slipknot album is looking for something tame and conventional. From the first time any of the Iowa musicians got together, the goal was to make something disturbingly brutal in its delivery, down to the band donning horrifying masks whenever they performed live. Although the group mostly left their scariest on the stage, one of the spookiest moments of their career happened when they ventured into the studio to cut their third album, Vol III: The Subliminal Verses.
Then again, no Slipknot project has had a track record for smooth sailing behind the scenes. During the rehearsals for the band’s debut record, guitar Jim Root recalled getting a custom guitar built by a manufacturer only for producer Ross Robinson to dropkick the guitar out of his hands.
Thinking it was more about the energy of the performance than any kind of gear, Robinson was known to be cutthroat in the studio, including burning the side of Clown’s face with candle wax before he played one of the basic tracks for Iowa. Coupled with the band’s dependencies on vices, most of the songs on their new albums would become torturous to play, leading to Corey Taylor stripping naked to the sing ‘Iowa’.
While they wanted to work with new producer Rick Rubin for their new project, the biggest change they had came from moving out of their usual wheelhouse. Descending into the infamous ‘Houdini Mansion’, the group would reside in the studio for months on end as they started to hone their skills in the studio.
From percussionist Chris Fehn’s account, most of the band knew that the house was haunted, remembering in Slipknot’s Audiobiography, “Yeah, lights would go on and off. It was evil. It was pretty ghostly.” Of all the members who claimed to see a ghost, Taylor would get it the worst, remembering seeing a figure in a tuxedo walking through the hallways before evaporating into thin air.
Although they were still intent on recording, Taylor remembers the song ‘Before I Forget’ becoming corrupted by the ghostly presence. As they layered different tracks to get the perfect take, the machine would become possessed by an evil spirit, leading to the outro of the track playing a disturbing tone at the finale.
According to Taylor, the effect happened purely by ghostly forces, saying, “Another ghost got into the machine in the control room one night as we were making a rough mix of ‘Vermilion’ – it started looping a section of a verse, so we hit ‘record’ and began making a remix of that loop. You can actually hear it on the album: it is in between ‘Before I Forget’ and ‘Vermilion Pt. 2’.”
Even though the band had no control over what the loop would sound like, it ended up providing a nice comedown from the intensity of the track. Since ‘Vermilion Pt. 2’ involves the group using acoustic instruments and ringing life to Taylor’s twisted love ballad, the loop serves as the soundtrack to the protagonist’s sanity snapping before the song starts. Slipknot may have had a fear of ghosts, but they got the best-case scenario when the ghost wanted to enhance their album.
