Graphic Nature’s Harvey Freeman fell in love with Slipknot as soon as he heard their iconic self-titled debut. The vocalist explains how The Nine made him rethink everything…
In 1999, Slipknot's self-titled debut announced them as the most intense new band on the block. As nu-metal was roaring up to speed, the nine masked terrors tore their way out of Des Moines, Iowa with a record that not only matched the anger of this new wave of heaviness, but upped the ferocity until it was basically on fire. It was a fine introduction to a band who would quickly become one of the most important of their time, and help shape the metal world for the next quarter of a century.
A few years and 4,000 miles away from the band's mid-American home city, a young Harvey Freeman discovered them. And with it, the future Graphic Nature frontman realised there was much more to music than just Nickelback bangers…
“The first Slipknot album changed the game. I would only have been about seven when it came out, so the first time I heard them was Duality from Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses). That made me go to Virgin Megastore and buy the self-titled album, and that was it. Hearing this was such a change to what I was used to hearing, which was Nickelback. And then seeing the aesthetics, the masks, the boilersuits, seeing how they would act onstage, it made me go, ‘I want to be [drummer] Joey Jordison. I want to join a band. I want to do all this stuff.’
“I loved their image and the whole aesthetic, giving themselves numbers instead of names and stuff. I remember watching an interview with Clown [percussionist Shawn Crahan] where he was talking about how he had set the idea for an image before the band started. It was basically: ‘You need to be Slipknot every minute of the day. You walk into the venue, you’re Slipknot.’ He wanted them to have that aura of, ‘Oh shit, Slipknot are here…’ It’s not a character that gets switched on. I think that's fucking awesome. It's something I really wanted to do with Graphic Nature, but it didn't go the way I wanted to. You can't wear windbreakers all day in the summer. Doesn't work.
“I thought they all had really cool masks. Paul Gray’s pig one was sick, Sid’s [Wilson, DJ] gas mask is sick. My favourite was Joey’s. The thing that I really liked about it was it was so human that it looked creepy. It was just a pale face and he'd have the black lines around the eyes. And it didn’t change much, which was also what I liked about Mick’s [Thomson, guitar] – it was a simple idea that looked amazing, and it hasn’t really changed since the beginning.
“For me, the best song on the album is Spit It Out. I remember watching the video – based on The Shining – and being so fucking enamoured, if that's even the word. I'd never seen The Shining, and when I finally did years later I thought, ‘Oh, this is like that Slipknot video…’ Not only is it really good on record, but live it’s fucking leagues better because you're there, you're in it. There's nothing quite like being in a Slipknot mosh-pit, when they tell everyone to get down on the ground ready to jump up. I love it. I remember seeing them at Download a couple of years ago, and it was one of those shows that made me realise I need to up everything we do onstage. We stand still compared to them and they're all, like, 50, so I’ve got no excuses. I need to go get the treadmill or something.
“I think the great thing about that album is that it still makes me feel that way to this day. Twenty-five years after it came out, it's on rotation for me weekly, if not daily. It’s fucking awesome.”
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