MUSIC INTERVIEW: SHAWN CRAHAN OF THE BLACK DOTS OF DEATH

A Clown Emerges From Behind The Slipknot Mask With Honesty, Bravery & Black Dots

By: Seth Shellhouse

February 11, 2011

Shawn Crahan, founding member of Grammy Award-winning metal powerhouse Slipknot, is about to release a new, more personal project, The Black Dots of Death.  Shawn (aka Clown, aka #6) took some time out to give Buzzine the lowdown on his new band and some insight into its formation, as well as some frank discussion of his philosophies on art and the realizations that come with family loss and aging.  

Seth Shellhouse: This is a very new project and, I think, a bit of a surprise for fans.  So I guess the first obvious question would be: How did The Black Dots of Death come about?  How was this one birthed?

Shawn Crahan: I'm known for rolling with all the questions and trying to really explain everything, so I'm going to do my best to do that. I lost my mom and my dad relatively pretty young, meaning in the last four years.  When I lost my dad, some things started happening in my head.  I started growing up pretty quick.  You start realizing the real lessons of life, and you can be pretty hard on yourself when you have grief and you're dealing with loss. Then I lost my mom two years after my dad.  I’m an only child, and I started going through things in my mind that only-children would go through after losing their parents, like the orphan mentality.  And I have a big family--I have four kids, two brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law and nephews, but it's not my mom and dad.  

So I started working on this music and I wanted this music to be really, really special because I started feeling something in me that hadn't come around for about ten years, meaning there was a certain me that started Slipknot with Paul Gray… I was younger and there was a certain idealistic thought process with what I wanted and what I wanted out of the world and these kind of things, and that mindset has been there for ten years but has been evolving for ten years.  So when I lost my dad, I started returning to that mindset, but it wasn't all the way there yet.  Then I lost my mom.  And then, unfortunately, I lost my partner in Slipknot.  Paul was my first best friend. I have several best friends, but he was my first best friend to pass on.  That was the last straw in the sense that I had gotten back this feeling that had been coming to me.

I’d just turned 41 in September. All of this (stuff) started happening about what kind of musician I am and where it comes from and what kind of aggression and anger I have boiling in my veins, but I needed to figure it out.  Where I am now at 41 is a lot like where I was in '99, but it's a lot wiser, a lot more intelligent.  It's a lot less physical and a lot more psychological, smarter... I'm older and I've evolved.  I'm less prone to want to hurt myself physically rather than use my mind to hurt the situation.  I've...evolved in my thinking.  

I've done a lot of projects since Slipknot started that were just different sides of me. I grew up in the ‘70s; I grew up on The Beatles and The Doors and Hendrix and stuff like this because of my mom and my dad. I wanted to express a different side of me with some of the other bands that I've done, and I think that confused a lot of people because that wasn't the guy they wanted to see.  But I wasn't ready to let out the personal, heavy me that they thought might come out.  It's taken like ten years to evolve my own mind on what I would be if ever I were to make some heavier music on my own.  Not metal, of course--just heavier music with heavier concepts.  And this music that I'm making is a little bit of everything that I love, and it's taken me a long time to hone in on those skills and be able to mesh all of the things that I've wanted to be able to mesh under an umbrella, under one band.  And the philosophy of the band name, The Black Dots of Death, is really personal to me. I've had that name in my mind since I was a little kid, and I've been exposed to it and it's been in my head, and I've been waiting and waiting and waiting because there's, to me, a really profound meaning behind it.  I found the right people who share my philosophy and who are willing to kick in the door like I did, willing to risk it all, willing to live the type of art that I want to live and don't question it. I don't question my own instincts toward art...or how extreme vocals can be, or how far you wanna push the envelope, and it's very hard to meet people who are willing to sacrifice their own life for the belief in art.  It's taken me this long to meet my partner, and this music is a hybrid of everything I love all rolled into one, but it's based off of just very rooted aggressiveness.

SS: It really does feel like a culmination of a lot of things.  There is a lot of genre-blending going on, and it's hard to pin down.  In thinking about a description, I'd say that, when I listen to Slipknot, a lot of times the feeling I get is just pure adrenaline, but when I listen to The Black Dots of Death, I get this feeling of unease.  So was that the overarching sonic goal? That unease?

SC: The Black Dots of Death is a threat.  It's a threat because that’s where I'm at in life.  I tell people all the time: my grandpa died in his sixties, my dad died in his early sixties, I'm probably gonna die in my sixties.  I'm 41 years old.  I’ve got just so much time left to develop what I am and leave my mark on the world.

And the fact of the matter is I am a certain person, I display a certain scratch.  In Slipknot, we have a famous saying that “the pieces are only as good as the whole." It's taken us ten years for everyone in the band to understand their place in the band to make the band exactly what the band is.  And that's why the band is what it is, and that's why it's so beautiful, because we all give to this world, to this enigma known as Slipknot.  This band (TBDOD) is my evolution--what I've learned by going all around the world, meeting different people, seeing things that I don't want to be exposed to, dealing with people that I don't want to deal with, and putting it all together.  

SS: So everything about this project is specifically designed to inspire that threatened feeling?

SC: We started this last year, and we just took our time to slowly develop it the right way.  For example, usually when I'm on a project, there are always names on it: where it's been recorded, who mixed it, who mastered it, yada, yada, yada.  When you get my CD from The Black Dots of Death, there's none of that.  I mean, there will be a time--on our website there will be credit. I believe in credit; I believe people need to have information, but at this point in time, I'm handing over a Eucharist, a threat; it's gonna be shoved down your throat whether you like it or not.  I've done this so long that I really don't care about this stuff (protocol) anymore.  When I feel that it's time to let people know who did what or this or that or where it was, then I'll put it up on my website, but I'll say it the way I want to say it, not the way the label wants me to say it or the press wants me to say it.  I'm over all that shit. I'm smarter than all that shit. I've done all that shit for ten years.  I've played the game.  The only game I'm gonna play is taking the call saying, "Hey, you've got an interview at 10:30."  I do want to do an interview and I do want to tell people about this band, but I don't have to play by anybody's rules anymore.  

And that's why I'm telling you that I'm a lot more dangerous than I was.  It used to be (that I'd use) a lot more physical attributes to prove where I was.  People would tell me, “You can't,” or “Slipknot can't go through there...” Well I'd just kick the fucking door in.  You're not going to tell us what we can't do.  I don't have to do that now. I can use my mind because I've evolved. I'm 41; I've learned so much and I've grown up so much.  And losing Paul [Gray] just put everything into so much perspective. I lost my dad, I lost my mom, and then I lost one of my best friends, and that's pretty much the combination of everything you can lose.  When Paul died, it really made me realize that life is so fucking precious and anything can happen at any time.  Slipknot could go away and be away because Paul is gone. Everything that you have can be gone, and a friend that you have that you talked to yesterday could be gone.  I could be on the phone with you right now and you might not make it home tonight because you could get in a car accident.  And I'll tell you: the unease that you feel is something that... I'm very into psychosis audio and frequencies and things that actually mess with you--frequencies that are actually designed to affect the human mind and give you anxiety and make your heart beat and be like, "Woah, I feel uneasy."  Well, it's probably because I'm zapping you with something.  That's how we're doing it, and that's what I'm about because that's where I'm at.

SS: That's really interesting because it sounds a bit like scoring a film.  This record is dealing with a lot of stories. And to preface, I'm not talking about vocal delivery, but there seem to be a lot of different voices, a sense of different characters.  Did you feel like you were scoring a story making this record, or were there specific movies you were referencing or thinking of?

SC: The big thing--and you're touching on something that is really important--is that, for us, everything is an episode.  Everything is like an ongoing...I don't want to say rant because we're not ranting, but one of my favorite things about the band is that everything is based on the singer.  I tell him all the time that (he) is really a storyteller. He writes the lyrics, but sometimes I'll throw scenarios at him and he'll throw scenarios at me.  And we only touch the most surreal scenarios, and we develop them, and then he develops them.  He just goes and goes and goes and goes and takes them to the furthest place that he possibly can.  His thing is that he is a very serious person and he only wants to touch base on serious matters.  Before he even approaches it, he'll jot down idea after idea and go further and further, and learn to take the simplest thing in the story and make it the most complex thing in the story.  And he'll keep doing that, and pretty soon we'll have this surreal story that is a threat and that is scary.  And I'll give you an example: we've got a song on the record called “Been Gone So Long.”  I was playing it in my car and, at that time, my daughter was 18 and I kept looking at her in the rearview mirror listening to it, and she was so enthralled with the story.  I could see she was biting her nails as she was listening to it.  And it wasn't like, "Oh god, dad's playing some more of his fucking music and we have to sit in the car going to dinner and listen to what he wants to listen to."  She was enthralled with the story.  When the song got done, before I could ask everybody what they thought, she had moved up close in between the seats up front and she was like, "Dad, is that real?  Did that really happen? What's going on with that one line…?"  And she was really concerned, it really affected her.  I don't want to say it bothered her or tormented her, because I didn't ask her that, but it grabbed her in a way that I've never witnessed before. And I've been around thousands of Slipknot kids who will come up to me and explain what our music means in ways that I can't even express to you.  But when it comes to my own music, this is the first time that I got any insight into the psychosis that I want to make, the art that I want to make.

SS: It's interesting because that track in particular deals with a lot of serious family stuff…

SC: It's very personal, I will tell you that.  Everything that's on the record is very personal.  Nothing is made up.  It's built off ideas that are (from) within and then we build off of them.  We might take it somewhere that isn't real close, meaning real close like you might say, "Well this can't be exactly about them," but you should know that it is.  We've just taken it over to a plateau for everyone in the world to enjoy and understand, but everything comes from the singer, from a very personal place, from an idea.  It all starts with like a single-word idea.  And usually everything we're dealing with is pretty dangerous.  

What's really cool is, as of right now, I've got 30 new songs written, and our plan is to give out music all the time.  We're getting the first one out, and then we're gonna be known as that band, like in the old days, when you rocked Van Halen, you'd get an album a year.  The band would put out an album, they'd tour the album, they'd get their ass in the studio, and then a year or a little less than a year: boom!  Next record.  We're gonna do the same thing, but we're gonna do it every six, seven months, only because technology has made it more available to do that.  You can cut the time in half.  We have all of these stories and these scenarios that we want to pass off.  

Someone very close to me got very sick recently, and I won't go into it because it's not my business or whatever, but they suffered a traumatic experience, faced life-or-death.  And this person told me that the one thing he had learned by facing this traumatic experience that could have killed him was that if there's something to do today, do it.  And we've all heard that, but it's hard to apply unless it happens to you.  This thing happened to him that affected him so blatantly and so deeply, that when he made that comment to me, I grabbed hold of it.  And that's what The Black Dots of Death are to me.  I don't have any more time to wait to tell you what I want to tell you.  You may agree with me, you may not agree with me.  You may want to be exposed to what we're gonna expose you to, you may not want to be exposed.  And that's what I love about the singer.  He is willing to go the deepest distance into his soul to express his pain, his hurt, his love, his hate, and the story he wants to tell.  And it doesn't matter.  He tells me all the time, "Anybody got a problem with any of this, you just tell them to come talk to me."  Those are the people that I roll with.  And the thing is, I look him right in the face and tell him, "I’ll be right next to you.  They'll have to take us both down.  This is what I've done for ten years.  This is the way I roll."

SS: Word.  And that brings up something I wanted to ask you about.  Really, your career has been such a coup.  I mean, you've achieved this great deal of success and popularity and even acclaim by just saying "fuck it" and not only touching on all of our taboos but really just purging all of the shit.  So, having been able to do that, what would you say is the long-term cultural goal for this project?  Outside of the band, what is the broader goal? What do you want people to say about you as an artist?

SC: That's a very good question and I'm glad you asked it, because there are a couple ways to answer it.  Number one: I was born to be a drummer, and I made a band where I became a percussionist. It's my doing, I designed it that way...I put myself in the position of being a percussionist.  Slipknot is a metal band. I'm not a metal drummer, I don't want to be a metal drummer, and I always knew that Joey (Jordison) was going to be in the band.  We always knew.  He wanted to be in the band, I wanted him to be in the band, we were friends, we knew we were going to take over the world together.  But with this, I get to live out my life's dream, I get to be the drummer.  

A week ago, I was having a conversation with my son and we were talking about people who had passed away and about the possibility of passing away… My son is 17 years old, and he is what Slipknot is--he is the next generation.  He grew up with it.  He used to sit at the top of the stairs with sticks and listen to us practice before we were signed, and he was, like, only two years of age, or four or whatever at the time. And he looked at me and said, "You know Dad, after everything that I've seen you do or try to do, and how extreme you are with your art or photography, or how much you're willing to put yourself out there, I can't see you dying any way but naturally on stage."  He didn't mean it in a morbid way, so I don't want you to think I'm leading to that, but he meant more like...I'd hate to say I'd have a heart attack or whatever.  But regardless of how that was going to be, he was just letting me know that it didn't seem proper, because of my art, for me to go any other way. It wouldn't seem fair because I've dedicated my life to "fuck it all" and to representing the kids who've had the backs turned to them.  And I'm a 41-year-old now and I still represent a very, very extreme group and idea.  Yeah, I'm 41, but there's still a freshman in high school who's getting teased, who isn't figuring out his social scene because he's getting made fun of.  He's just coming to school looking the way he wants to look, but the majority of kids are getting brainwashed to look one way and (are) out-casting that person.  I represent that, and I do believe that The Black Dots of Death is a further entity. It's even further into that more extreme kid, and I believe that we're going to get into a more dangerous area.  

Right now, I have two priorities: My first priority is to get my release out, and it's just nine songs. It's just the beginning, and we'll be doing some shows, but my real big priority is to go out in June and grieve my bass player in the way I want to with my seven other brothers and be able to celebrate his life.  I've been looking forward to this since we announced the dates.  Those are my two priorities right now.  And then, after we do that with Slipknot, it's gonna be all Black Dots stuff.  I think people are gonna see that the people we are going to attract are going to be an extreme thought process, because that's what I've become, that's what I project, that's what I am, and that's what I've evolved into.  To be able to be the envelope, so to speak.  I've been pushing it, pushing it, pushing it, now I'm just there.  I don't need to use physical violence to express anger at a situation.  I can just sit down, play the drums, and have people go into a trance on really what I represent.

I've been waiting for the right moment to let the heavy out of me.  It never felt right over the past ten years.  That's why I did some other bands, some other experiments, some other feelings.  I know those bands always confused people.  They were like, "This is the guy that started Slipknot. He's making pop songs?"  What do you want?  I grew up in the fucking ‘70s.  I love all music, as long as it's good.  I have love running through my veins too.  I have four kids. I've been married faithfully for 18 fucking years.  I mean, come on, man. I should be able to experiment, but I've been very prejudiced against making heavy music because I didn't want to perpetrate what's real, and what's real is Slipknot.  So I've been really prejudiced on myself saying, "Don't you dare." I guess prejudiced is the wrong word, but don't perpetrate something that you're not.  I've been really hard on myself and made sure I didn't just go out and make heavy music just to make heavy music because I knew it would fly. I wanted to wait until it was born in me and could bloom in me.  I didn't want to perpetrate something I wasn't, and I waited.  It started when all this loss was coming, and I started putting together the riddles of life.  And then the singer and I...he's like my brother.  And I don't have any brothers, but he's the closest thing that I have. He actually is my brother.  It doesn't matter if we're not physically related or have blood.  We share blood and he is my brother, and he has helped me through the hardest times of my life.  2010 was probably the worst year of my life, and 2011 is beginning to be pretty hard as well.  But every night, starting at about midnight til 2:00 a.m., all we do is talk about the band, and we go into these thoughts, and we've evolved it already. 

We have a new website--we just put something up to give people whatever, but the real shit goes up on (February) 23^rd, and I do believe it's going to make people numb.  It's gonna be a site that unravels until the 1st.  It comes up on February 23^rd, and then every day something new will be opened up, and then on March 1^st, when the album drops, the whole site will be available and it will have everything I ever wanted.  

I feel real good, and I'm with a bunch of people that share in my idea of what this is.  I've never really been able to go out with my other band; I'm kind of like the old man up on the hill--the wizard, so to speak, kind of a recluse.  I run and hide and I don't invite myself in.  But with this band, we have this clear picture of us being in Japan, walking down the street, all of us together, eating dinner with the Japanese people, drinking sake, eating Korean BBQ, going to Australia, all of us eating in the lobby and walking around…  It's not that I haven't wanted to do that with my other band, but my other band...they're their own monsters, they make their own mistakes.  This band is close to who I am personally.  That doesn't make it any better or worse than anything else I've done, this is just a personal journey.  This is the closest I've gotten to my own madness and heaviness.  And it's taken me 12 years to reunite with that feeling and make sure it's not contrived and disrespectful to the larger band, which is my life.  That is my life, and I respect it and everybody in that band like no other...and that band has been able to help me find myself.  My dad died while I was on the road with Slipknot, and that was one of my greatest fears with being in a band.  I meet people every day that want record deals, that want a bus--they want to be famous, they want all the things that I have, all of the bullshit, but they're not willing to sacrifice like the nine guys did in Slipknot.  And I lost my dad on the road and I made the band drive me, with the bus, from Canada to my house so the first person I could see when I got off was my wife.  I told them, "Don't fly me home because I'll have a freak-out." And we're such a family that they did that.  And they all attended my dad's funeral.  That's what that is. That's real shit.

And because of things like that and actually living that kind of stuff--being on the road and doing a show and being told after the show that your dad's passed--those are real things that make up a person for the future, and that's where I'm at now.  That's 12 years of things I've put together to make this up, and this is a very, very serious and dangerous band and thought process.  And I think it's only for...well, we'll see what happens, but I need it.  I need it for salvation.

SS:  This project is you.  This is your heart.  The music is you. So I'm wondering how involved you are going to be in the visual aspects and the multi-media, because I know you're really into film and video and photography and painting, all that…

SC: It's very funny that you said this because, honestly, this will be the most visual band that I've ever been in.  I'm going to incorporate multimedia with the band. Projection is going to be a very big part of this band.  We're taking ourselves out of it, more or less.  I don't want to give it all away, but it's going to be based off of my artwork.  There'll be a lot of my artwork right there for you to touch and see.  I was able to do this because I'm working with people who understand me and they like where I'm at, and they like what I do and they're not selfish. The lead singer who's doing this pushes me to use my art and to use my visuals because 1) he's a fan of it, 2) he loves it, 3) he feels it and it makes him feel, and 4) he helps me get it done.  So he's really a part of it.  It's my stuff, but it's so personal to him that he puts himself in it as well. He'll do anything to help me get this stuff out.  Visuals are going to be a HUGE part of what this is live, and it's going to be awesome because, instead of me making production and being like "Let's do this and this and this", it's going to be like “I have to make this, I have to make this and it has to work like this or it has to work like this.”  It's going to be scary in the sense of exploring how I feel.

SS: It sounds like part lab, part factory, like it's going to be very cathartic.

SC: It is.  I can’t wait for you to see the website.  It starts with that.  It's very simple, but you're going to get the point right off the bat. It's very cathartic. And it's very painful. I was born to play the drums, and what's funny is most people in the world will say, "I didn't even know you could play drums." Even though they've watched me play percussion, they don't think I play drums.  But anyone who has actually seen me play a drum-set has to take a step back and say, "Woah, wait a minute...that's the most personal expression of Shawn Crahan I've ever seen in my life. Like, I've watched the clown run around and I've seen all this shit, but I've never seen the personal pain and the personal violence."  I give you the most of me when I play drums. You get the deepest look into what I am when you watch me play drums, and that is why I'm surrounding myself with everything that is an art-form from me.  

And it's not me calling the shots.  It's me and my partner.  My partner going, "I love this part about it." It's like me talking to him about his stories.  He allows me to interject certain little areas that inspire him.  Well he inspires me.  He'll go, "I love it when you do this, you should do more of this," and that'll get me going on...painting.  I'll start painting some shit.  So this is going to be very, very visual.  I didn't really think we were going to get on this conversation because we're focusing on the release right now, but if you've gone to our site, you can tell.  We have our store up now, and you can see the album cover.  You can see this is going to be a highly artistic project.  Our album cover is a baby head, which you can see online, and it represents something. And if you go to the store, there's an explanation of what it is.  There are four series of baby heads that I'm going to basically make.  I'm going to take these pure baby heads and turn them into pieces of art, and they're going to be for sale. We're just doing different things, making this more of what I've always wanted to be, which is art.  I believe in art.  I grew up on Dr. Seuss and Rembrandt books that were made for kids.  That's what my parents threw me then.  I was always reading books about Van Gogh or Rembrandt or whatever, that were for kids to read.  And as I got older, they started buying me books that were for older kids to read, and all of a sudden I have a thousand pages of Salvador Dali.  And then I go to the St. Petersburg Museum.  And Slipknot has allowed me to go to The Louvre.  I've been to The Louvre every time I've been in Paris, and I go to a different area.  They say you can't really see The Louvre unless you've got a week.  Well, I've probably seen The Louvre because I've been there so many times and caught a different scene every time and been able to check out something new.  I've just filled my whole life full of art, and as I'm getting older and as things are happening, I'm able to really, really, really get my head behind the fact that, man, all I wanna do is art.  It's just the truth.  I make dangerous art.  I make art that makes people feel.  I just did an interview the other day about Slipknot, and the guy was telling me that the first time he saw Slipknot, he'd seen about every metal band in the entire world, but when he came to see us and the lights went out, there was a feeling--there was something that he's never experienced and it was just something different that happened, and that's where I'm at now personally.  That's what I'm going to give to the listener and the people in this world.  I'm going to give them my inner, personal hurt and me.  I'm giving them all of me.  All of my art has been me, and I'm giving it all from me to them.

SS: Shawn, thank you for giving me so much time and for getting so deep into what this is all about.

SC: I appreciate you for getting into this new project.  A lot of people want to pop shots because of the big band, and I do nothing but respect the big band and love it and wouldn't have anything without it.  It's my love, but so many people want to come in and they want to destroy anything you want to do personally.  And I respect and thank you for taking the time to explore what I'm doing personally as a human because it comes from a very deep place, and a lot of things have happened in my life that have helped me become what this is.

SS: Absolutely, brother.  And man, you're an artist.  Anyone who tries to pigeonhole you doesn't understand art...and they never will.

SC: I appreciate you saying that, man. Sometimes I wake up and it's hard to admit to yourself, but I still don't know if I can say I'm an artist.  I guess it's one of those things that artists have a hard time saying, but I really appreciate you saying that about me. Thank you very much.  

Black Dots of Death's debut album, 'Ever Since We Were Children,' is available from Sopra Evil/Rock Science Ventures on March 29, 2011.