The wait is over. GRAMMY Award-winning Iowan metal icons Slipknot have released their seventh full-length album The End, So Far today, to the delight of maggots across the globe.
Produced collaboratively by Joe Baressi (Queens Of The Stone Age, Soundgarden, Avenged Sevenfold, Parkway Drive) and Slipknot, The End, So Far is the follow-up to Slipknot’s 2019 We Are Not Your Kind which marked the band’s third consecutive #1 on the ARIA album chart.
Preceded by three well-received singles The Chapeltown Rag, The Dying Song (Time To Sing) and Yen, which introduced us into the immersive and sonically expansive world of The End, So Far the record sees one of the world’s most popular and deeply enigmatic bands relentlessly charting new ground as they continue to redefine, revitalize, and reimagine the scope of rock music.
To celebrate the widely anticipated release we caught up with Slipknot bass player, Alessandro 'V-Man' Venturella for a discussion about all things The End, So Far.
It’s an exciting time for maggots everywhere as Slipknot are about to drop your seventh full-length, The End, So Far. As a band member, are you as excited for it to drop as we all are?
“I’m very excited. It has taken a while to get here and I’m glad to know that in a couple of weeks there’ll be a physical copy that I can hold in my hands and I can say, here it is, we’ve done it.”
Maggots have heard three tracks from the album so far, The Chapeltown Rag, The Dying Song (Time To Sing) and Yen, do you feel like between those three tracks, you’ve provided a good indication of the sound of the album overall?
"There are definitely some other songs on there that might throw people out. The order of the songs on the record is important, as I think it’s the only way people will fully get it. If we’d put out songs like Adderal or Finale as singles first, I don’t think people would quite get it. That’s not because of the quality of the songs though, it’s because of the context of what the album is. The album itself is a piece of music. I don’t see it as all individual songs. When people can listen to it from start to finish, that’s when they’ll understand The End, So Far. "
One thing that I found struck me on my first listen is how the two songs that bookend the record, Adderall and Finale blend together in such a way that it genuinely feels like an endless, cohesive piece of music, it sort of traps the listener in a Slipknot timewarp! Are you hoping that’s how people will find their first encounter with the record?
Definitely. It’s also the way that I want to listen to the record. I’m going to go down to the shops, buy it, then sit and listen to it at home, and that’s when the album will be done for me. I’ve heard these songs many times before, but I’ve never been able to listen to it from start to finish the way that I’d listen to it if I was a fan. I’m not telling people that’s how they HAVE to listen to the music, you can’t force people to do that, but if they’ve got a spare hour or so, that’s the way I would do it.
To my ears it shares some similarities with Vol 3: The Subliminal Verses, as someone involved in the creation of the record, where do you feel The End, So Far sits in the overall pantheon of Slipknot records?
"For me, it was a bridge between The Gray Chapter and We Are Not Your Kind. While there are definitely some elements of Iowa present on it, with songs like The Chapeltown Rag and The Dying Song, I feel like that’s such a small amount. So to me, I think with the way all the melodies and harmonies and heaviness blend together, it feels like those two records flowing into each other. It’s a natural progression from those records.”
“The Vol 3 aspects that I can see are the way that I tried to work on the bass a lot more, as per Vol 3, but it was never a matter of thinking ‘I need to make this part sound like this record’, it was more a case of trying to give the three guitars in the band more of a voice, as opposed to a continuous riff that we all copy, and then one of us breaks off for a little lead break or a solo. There’s definitely more space between us on this one.”
It is quite an expansive record and a very active listening experience. There are a lot of slow-burning tracks that build into these massive compositions, but then there are also tracks that just seem to randomly smack you across the face out of nowhere with how unrelentingly heavy they are. Hivemind and H377 are two examples of that, where you’ve settled into what you think is the groove of the record and then that hits and it’s like listening to self-titled again! Was that deliberate?
“Well, that’s the thing, that’s why I was trying to bridge it with The Gray Chapter because there are songs like Negative One and Custer, trying to bring the essence and the heaviness of those tracks and mixing it with the melody of We Are Not Your Kind and all the little art pieces that have now been turned into songs. The melody is now in the guitar and in the bass, rather than it being strictly keyboard or vocal work.”
“It’s a progression. I’d never sit at home and think ‘right, how do I get that riff’, you’d be cheating yourself, but we can’t all just sit at home and do the same thing as we’ve done before. And your brain goes somewhere else now because you might have listened to something new, or you've taken in a new band, or, I don't know, something you heard on TV, or some classical piece or something like that, you know? There's always new information coming into the brain, and I think that affects the way that you and I think that's where this record is for everybody in the band.”
As far as your input goes, on a personal level, do you feel like you have more ownership and more input on the overall sound of the record than perhaps you may have had before?
Definitely, this is the first record where I’ve actually gone from demo to full song that is actually on the CD. On the previous record, the song Neo Forte was the closest I’d come to that before, Clown came to me with a drum part, and I said ‘why don’t we try this, let’s try that’ and he was like ‘oh wow, I didn’t see that coming’. So on this record, it felt like he went ‘alright, here we go, let’s see what you’ve got’.”
“I’m a musician, I’m not going to sit down and do nothing, if I’m not practising guitar or bass, I’ll be playing the piano or messing around with synths, stuff like that. So I started demoing more, that’s when the song started coming, and I can’t just hand over a riff, I can’t just go ‘here’s a riff’, because that doesn’t tell you where you want it to go. So I did everything, all of the programming, the drums, the bass, I do it as a full song in the sense that it’s not the finished product, but this is my idea, what do you think? I took that over to Clown and we sat down with them and it went from there.”
As a bass player, playing in Slipknot seems like a very different proposition to playing with most bands, in the sense that the rhythm section is so much bigger. How do you approach your playing? Are you following Clown? Are you following Jay?
“Live I mainly keep my in-ears, super basic. It’s just me and Jay with a scattering of guitars, on either side, very faintly, with Corey straight down the middle. That helps me. In the studio, it’s completely different, I’ll feed off what the others are doing. In the studio, Mike's right next to me and me and Mike did a lot of orchestration and stuff on this record. So, you know, there was a connection between me and him. Then like Clown’s over there, he's got his set up, Jay’s to the left of me, Jim’s there, Mick is there, and you’re all just looking at each other and you feel like a unit. That’s the way we feed off each other.”
“Live, it feels like you’ve just got to play and go for it. I’ve just got to lock in with Jay and everyone is doing their thing, headbanging. The live show and the studio are like night and day to me.”
Slipknot are back out on the road playing live to thousands of people a night, again, what does it feel like to be back out performing in front of these huge crowds after the enforced break of the pandemic?
“Oh, it’s incredible. The reality doesn’t hit you until you get up there. I like to go to venues quite early, I’ll go meet up with the crew, see all the gear, and make sure everything’s sorted, it’s not that I don’t trust anyone or anything, it’s just a little routine that I like to do. Then, you see it, you see the expanse of where the crowd is going to be. Once it is show time you’ve got that one-hour call it starts to really hit you, and then you walk out and see it, it’s incredible. Once I see all the kids and see that everyone’s having a great time, that’s enough to get me going.”
Slipknot has really branched out with this record campaign, technologically, moving into the Web3 space with Knotverse. Is that something you have a hands-on role with or does it more happen on the periphery?
“Yes, that’s the work of the band itself and the Knotfest team. We're coming into modern times, and everything's always changing. Everything's always evolving, and you just have to be on top of it. You can't be stuck in the basement with a cassette player, you know, you've got to move forward. And I think that's just the way that the world's going. I'm all for it. I’m not going to get on TikTok anytime soon though.”
Have you played SMITE as yourself yet?
“No. No one ever gave me a copy! It was quite fun doing all the voice-overdubs though, me and Mike did it on a day off, it was quite fun. If any videogame people out there want more voiceover work done, hit me up!”
What a dream though! As a kid, you probably sat there playing Nintendo or whatever thinking fuck it would be cool to be in a video game one day. Well now, you are, is it cool?
“Yes! I'm all for it.”
Are there any more surprises we can be expecting coming forward toward the release of the record? Or is it just one of those things where it's like, we're ready, here it is, deal with it maggots?
“The thing is with Slipknot, even when I was growing up as a fan, seeing Slipknot, there was always a mystique to the band. That’s never going to change. That’s what makes Slipknot, Slipknot, you know? You can’t have everything, you’ve got to wait your turn, and I love that.”
“I miss the mystique of a lot of music nowadays. I think we live in an age where everything is just handed out on a plate, you can literally go see inside someone’s kitchen and see what they’re eating on a Wednesday. Whereas back in the day, you had to go to shows to see what kind of guitar gear everyone’s got and see what they’re playing. Or you had to wait outside of venues to try and get tickets. Nowadays it all feels a bit too easily accomplished. I do miss that aspect of being a fan.”
The not knowing, was fun. It was fun sitting down with records and reading the lyrics and the liner notes and trying and work out the connections between the members and other bands and who wrote what, I miss flipping through pages of magazines trying to get some form of insight into how the sausage is made, so to speak. Maybe we are just old, but it was fun, wasn’t it?
“That’s the thing isn’t it? The other day I was trying to figure out an issue I was having with a MIDI input with one of my rigs, and I thought, ‘I should just read the bloody manual’, but I didn't I just typed in Reddit, and then there was a whole Reddit forum, where someone showed me how to do it. And I'm like, ‘Oh, that was easy.’ So it’s a curse, but it’s also a great thing as well. I shouldn't mock it.”
Touching back on the record, there are a lot of clean vocals from Corey on this album. Do you have any concerns about how fans might respond to that?
“How I feel about a lot of records is that if I’m going to go and listen to a band and all they’re known for is just scream, scream, scream, scream, and there is no diversity or swing in the songs, it's just heavy from start to finish. Then, you know, that's what you expect. I think that's what you get. But I feel like, with Slipknot, Corey has been singing for a very long time, doing these clean vocals. I feel like if the song needs it, the song gets it. If that’s how he's feeling and that’s the lyrics and that's what it needs, that's what it gets, you know? That's my view on it, on clean vocals. Whatever Corey put down, fits perfectly with what we've written. And I think if he was to go scream throughout the whole record, I don't think many people get it.”
Outside of music what are you a Maniac for?
“I’m very big into cars, like racing and stuff. I recently got in trouble for driving too fast. So II can't drive as fast as I used to. But I bought myself a big racing sim, like a moving seat with a VR set, and I do my racing on that, so I don't get in trouble with the Police. So there's that, I’m also very big into that guitar building, I like lutherie stuff and yeah, that's, that's kind of like my main two big hobbies. And I like drinking wine, nice wine. I’m a big wine fan.”
Any chance of a Slipknot wine? If so, what type?
“I’d love to, I’ve already spoken to Clown about this because he knows I’m a big wine fan. It’d be some form of a Tuscan heavy hitter, I’m a big fan of Barolos or Moroni’s. I think it's more because of the Italian side of my heritage. My dad was a chef at a restaurant, so I kind of grew up around it. I think it's naturally in my, in my genetics to like wine.”
What have you been listening to, while drinking that wine?
“I listen to a lot of Rammstein, I love Rammstein. Leprous, I love them at the moment. I listened to a lot of Plini, he’s Australian. I was just chatting to him the other day, and I said ‘we’ve got to get you guys supporting Slipknot if we come to Australia.”
That would be incredible! I’d also really like to watch what the Slipknot audience would make of it too!
“I’d love it. I’d definitely be watching.”
Well, my final question for you before I let get on your way is if you could choose one song off of this record for Slipknot fans to listen to, what song would it be?
"Yen that's like my favourite of the whole lot. But not by far, you know?"
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