Jim Root — number 4 — has been Slipknot's guitarist since 1999, joining in time for the debut album. Born in 1971, he forms with Mick Thomson the pair that holds up the band's harmonic foundation. His role is the same as his partner's, and that is precisely the point: the two guitars do not divide into rhythm and lead, as in traditional heavy metal. They play the same thing, doubled, and the result is a mass no single guitarist could produce. When there is a solo — and there are few — it is short and functional. In an arrangement with nine people producing sound simultaneously, individual virtuosity would be one more noise. That restraint does not come from limitation. Root kept Stone Sour going for fifteen years alongside Corey Taylor, a melodic rock band where he played in a completely different way — long solos, clean layers, room to breathe. He knows how to do the opposite of what he does in Slipknot; he chooses not to. He is on the whole discography, from the 1999 record to The End, So Far (2022), across the death of Paul Gray, Joey Jordison's departure and the reconfigurations of the last decade.
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