Jason Arnopp - Slipknot: Inside the Sickness, Behind the Masks With an Intro by Ozzy Osbourne and Afterword by Gene Simmons

Ignoring every rule in the book and more besides, Slipknot have achieved unprecedented success, selling two million copies of their debut album worldwide. Outraging authorities and courting controversy at every turn, they have wowed crowds across the globe by risking life and limb during extraordinary live performances. This is a tale of struggle, fear, madness and hideous injuries, all seen through the eyeholes of the band. And best of all, no one knows what they look like.

Featuring an introduction by the legendary Ozzy Osbourne and an afterword by Gene Simmons, plus exclusive quotes from Slipknot themselves, Inside the Sickness, Behind the Masks fully documents the Des Moines crews transformation into unorthodox mega-stars.

With nu metal as the new punk, Slipknot are the most significant and electrifying new band since the Sex Pistols.

Jason Arnopp is a former rock journalist who is now an author and scriptwriter. He has written several Doctor Who audiobooks, including The Gemini Contagion, UNIT Dominion, Army of Death and the title play in The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories. In addition, he wrote The Sarah Jane Adventures: Deadly Download and has contributed to the anthology Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who. In 2011, he wrote and executive-produced the Lionsgate US horror film Stormhouse, and the following year two of his horror novellas The Beast in the Basement and A Sincere Warning About the Entity in Your Home were published as Kindle exclusives. He also script-edited the 2012 film The Man Inside, a thriller about a young boxer starring Ashley Thomas, Peter Mullan and David Harewood.

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This one goes out to

Slipknot (most notably Joey Jordison, who required aspirin after one bout of hyperactive recollections).

Kisss Gene Simmons (one of the biggest rock stars ever, yet a delight to deal with smaller bands take note).

Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne and their amiable assistant Michael Guarracino.

Jack Osbourne.

Ross Robinson (a ridiculously cool gentleman who spoke on his cellphone until it started melting in his hand).

Todd McFarlane; SR Studios Mike Lawyer and Sean McMahon; Trent Reznor; Rob Zombie; Amens Casey Chaos; Nadja Peulen; Kitties Morgan Lander; Robb Flynn of Machine Head; Kas Mercer and Lisa McNamee at Mercenary PR; Michelle Kerr, Monte Conner, Maria Gonzales and Mark Eternal Devastation Palmer at Roadrunner; Steve Browning at Excess Press; Emma Lyne and Mary-Anne Hobbs at the Radio 1 Rock Show; Phil Alexander, Paul Rees, Caroline Fish, Paul Brannigan, Ben Myers, Josh Sindell, Mrat, Birgit Martinussen, Lisa Johnson and everyone at Kerrang!; Ross Make It Ring Halfin and William Nash at Genesis; Paul Slider Harries; Dante Banutto and John Robb; Ill Literature; Altrockworld.com; Loud & Heavy; IGN For Men; MTV.

Ray Zell, for Jack Daniels and ideas, always simultaneously.

My fine editor Natalie Jerome and everyone at Ebury Press.

Ma, Pa, Uncle John, Uncle George and all the family.

I wish I could break with authorly tradition and label my girlfriend a viciously unsupportive hellspawn, but thats sadly not possible. Dijana Capan, prepare the thimbles.

Fittingly, it was Halloween in 1998 when I first laid ears on Slipknot.

It was always fun, visiting the Manhattan offices of Roadrunner Records. Their A&R guvnor Monte Conner would always take some pleasure in playing me the latest and allegedly greatest signings to the label. This afternoon, Conner had a particularly confident gleam in his eye as he played me rough cuts from a new work-in-progress album by a little known Des Moines act.

The first Slipknot song I heard was Spit It Out all crazed raps and massive guitar riffs which squealed like pigs, Deliverance-style. Next came the truly warped marriage of thumping techno and raging metal that was Surfacing. I was hooked, and not even the subsequent blast of Amens new demo recordings could outshine the memory. Then Monte showed me a picture of Slipknot.

Oh.

My.

God.

These people looked like characters from the finest slasher movie there never was. And they actually had the music to back it up. Could this be whisper it the perfect band? Indeed it could. In ten years of working at Kerrang!, the UKs weekly rock Bible, I had rarely been so heavily bowled over by a new outfit.

Today, when I tell people that Slipknot are my favourite band, they tend to look at me as if I had said, I derive intense enjoyment from dancing on hot coals. While Slipknot are loved by a few million people worldwide, they have at least as many detractors. These people take great pleasure in sneering at the band, writing them off as a mere gimmicky flash in the pan. My stock response is that, even if Slipknot turn out to be one or two-album wonders, being an incendiary band of the moment never did the Sex Pistols any harm. This is the brightest, fiercest flash in the pan you could ever hope for.

Slipknot are all about today, and they are a thousand times more exciting right here, right now, than any number of generation-spanning rock behemoths who stumble onwards, despite having cut their best material decades back. Even if the individual members of Knot lose the plot or end up plugging solo projects which suck the big one, they can always tell the grandchildren that they shook the world with a mighty band who made countless draws drop.

This book is not only about cataloguing Slipknots rise to fame, but tugging back those masks and taking a look at the people behind them. For nine grown men who jump around stages for a living, the Knot men are remarkably complex characters and Ive tried to capture that, while examining the slings and arrows which have been thrown in their general direction.