Corey Taylor

Corey Taylor has been Slipknot's singer since 1997, and is the member who made the band viable outside its own niche. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1973, he joined shortly before the debut album was recorded and brought something the group did not have until then: someone able to scream and to sing. That double capacity is why Slipknot escaped the fate of the nu metal bands it was lumped in with. Taylor alternates, often within a single track, a full-throated guttural scream and a clean, pitched, melodic singing — and it is that second voice that allowed "Duality", "Snuff" and "Vermilion" to exist without the band losing the violence that defined it. Without it, Slipknot would be a niche phenomenon; with it, it became a stadium band. His lyrics deal with rage, self-destruction and alienation in the first person, and he has spoken publicly for years about addiction and mental health, a subject that also appears in the books he has published. In parallel he keeps Stone Sour, a more melodic rock band that precedes Slipknot in his own path and which he led for more than two decades, besides solo work.