COREY TAYLOR Had Chance To Be New ANTHRAX Singer In 2007 And Is Pissed It Never Happened
Corey Taylor says that his management and record company stopped him from singing with ANTHRAX when the opportunity for him to work with the latter band presented itself nearly a decade ago.
The SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman had harbored hopes of replacing Joey Belladonna for the follow-up to “We’ve Come For You All”, recorded with John Bush in 2003.
“I remember Charlie [Benante, ANTHRAX drummer] getting super stoked and sending me stuff,” Corey recalled during an appearance on ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian‘s show “Never Meet Your Heroes” on SiriusXM Volume (Ch. 106). “And I was starting to write lyrics. And then it all went to hell.”
Taylor told Ian: “I was literally getting ready to fly to Chicago to meet up with you guys. And here comes [SLIPKNOT manager Cory] Brennan, here comes some people from [SLIPKNOT‘s record label] Roadrunner, and it was, ‘You can’t do this.’ And I’m, like, ‘What do you mean I can’t do this? I mean, we’ve got half an album.’ I was so pissed, dude. I was, like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And, basically, they strong-armed me, because they wanted the new SLIPKNOT album, which, at the time, I was about the only person who could really kind of rein everybody in, to get them going; it was a very strange time. But they weren’t gonna let me do it; they just straight-up weren’t gonna let me do it. And I just remember… even before I called you guys, just sitting in my kitchen and just being so downtrodden, just crestfallen, because I had looked so forward to everything. And the whole thing that I just kept saying was, ‘I’ve let you guys down.’ I thought Charlie was mad at me for the longest time.”
Despite the fact that Corey‘s dream of recording an album with ANTHRAX never came to fruition, the singer believes that “everything happens exactly for a reason.” He told Scott: “These last two albums that you guys have put out have been so good. This new one [2016’s ‘For All Kings’, man, is so goddamn good. I can remember listening to it and being so stoked. I was just, like, ‘Oh, this is fucking genius.’ So good for you guys, man.”
ANTHRAX split with Belladonna in January 2007, less than two years after reuniting with him and other members of the band’s “classic” lineup of the ’80s and early ’90s. Bush had been a member of the band before that, from 1992 to 2005.
ANTHRAX eventually reunited with Belladonna in May 2010 and recorded two more albums with the singer: 2011’s “Worship Music” and the aforementioned “For All Kings”.
Blabbermouth
