Why do Slipknot members wear masks and what do they mean?

Well, you probably have never asked yourself this since you may not know the band, but today I am going to talk about why the members of Slipknot wear masks and what each of these means and starting with him why, while they were thinking about the concept, what did they want? give the band a decision on what they wanted something that was anti-establishment just because it was cool that no one knew who the band members were. 

nd in Corey Taylor's own words, says that " it was part of the shock culture but, at the same time. It fit the artistic style we were trying to target. It was almost like a uniform, it was the anti-image. At that time, everyone was shiny and fashionable.”

“And there we were, nine assholes from Iowa saying, 'You know what? You won't see our faces or hair! There's our mask! You will not know how we dress, because here are our bibs. You won't know our name either! Here you have it, it's a number, a barcode."

On the other hand, something very interesting about each of these masks is that the vast majority of the owners of these masks came to give meaning to each of their masks.

Corey Taylor, the voice of the band, initially wore a mask with dreadlocks protruding from the top and a ghostly, expressionless face. Later, he removed his dreadlocks and he went on to have a multicolored tone. He then removed the long hair and modified some things about his face, looking a little more "human".

Taylor once said: “We put on a mask and we don't care about our faces. It will always be the music first." Likewise, after the change made in 2014, the voice of the band said: “People like me, Clown, Sid, change their shiny masks. Because, to me, the mask is a representation of the person on the inside, and no one stays the same over time."

Thomson once said, “If you know who you are, you don't need to change. I think I've got enough of this [mask] right to understand how I'm doing." Mick revealed that his mask means hate, a word written all over the guitarist's gear.

Guitarist Jim Root inherited his first mask from his predecessor in the band, Josh Brainard. A black bondage mask, but he found it too uncomfortable, so he turned it into a jester mask, as he thought it better reflected his personality.

The most enigmatic member of the band. In the beginning he wore a pair of panties on his head, before he had an old helmet, stuck long spikes through it, and added a lantern to the top.It has the meaning of loneliness and pain, it is said that it is due to the death of his wife.

DJ Sid Wilson's mask was constantly changing. The first of it was a simple gas mask, then the gas mask was in the shape of a skull. Later it was turned into a skull, a traditional skeleton with a blackened nose and dirty teeth. They don't really have a meaning as such other than the fact that they tend to have robotic things due to their liking for transformers.

Shawn Crahan's iconic clown mask was the one that started it all. In the beginning, the clown mask was a mass of bloody bandages wrapped around his face, with a macabre red nose on the front. Aside from the fact that the first mask he wore was the one he had on hand, it is also said that it is because of the joking personality that he wears a clown mask, also noteworthy is the time he made a pentagram on the mask to mock criticism because they were labeled satanic.

Died in 2010. Bassist and songwriter Paul Gray initially simply wrapped his head with tape, before choosing a Halloween pig mask. The pig face was later replaced by a more human, Hannibal Lecter-style one, with nails as a grille in the mouth and a bullet hole in the head. Gray had two masks in his later years in the band, both very similar to the Hannibal Lecter mask.

One Halloween night, when he was a little boy, his mother came home wearing a completely expressionless and terrifying Japanese kabuki mask. Its emotionless look stuck with him and he adopted it for the band. In the early years as a member of Slipknot, his mask didn't vary much, but was updated with several different designs and claw cuts. In 2008, however, the change was radical, before leaving the band he showed a mask that shocked everyone: facial stitches and a crown of thorns representing a demonic christ. He considered it "creepier than ever".

And these were some brief explanations about certain meanings that the members came to give to their masks and personally I find something very interesting because at that time it was a new concept which made many people interested in the band.