Clown

Shawn Crahan — known as Clown, number 6 — is Slipknot's percussionist, co-founder and visual director, present since the band formed in Iowa in 1995. His contribution goes far beyond the instrument. It was Crahan who conceived the visual identity that made Slipknot instantly recognisable: the individual masks, the identical jumpsuits, the numbering from zero to eight. That visual grammar is not stage costume — it erases the musicians' individuality and turns nine people into a single entity, and it is why the band works as an image even before it works as a sound. Crahan also directs a large part of the group's videos and visual material. As a percussionist he fills a function almost no heavy band has. Alongside a second percussionist he adds layers of struck metal, barrels and improvised objects on top of the drums — a sound neither melodic nor exactly rhythmic, which gives Slipknot an industrial texture no conventional arrangement would produce. He has crossed the band's whole history: the 1999 debut, Iowa (2001), the death of Paul Gray in 2010, Joey Jordison's departure and the successive reconfigurations up to the current line-up.