While beef between Slipknot and Mushroomhead made for good headlines in the late ’90s and early 2000s, former Slipknot singer Anders Colsefni reveals that tensions between the two bands only arose after he had completed his stint in Slipknot. In fact, he says he was unaware of the fellow Midwestern masked band and only learned of their existence years later.
Speaking with the Everblack podcast (as heard below), Colsefni chalks up his lack of knowledge about Mushroomhead to it being a different time with fewer informational options. “None of us had heard of them. We didn’t have Internet,” explained the singer. “It’s not, like, a band from another state, unless they come and play shows in our town, which they didn’t, we wouldn’t know about them, unless they’re signed and they’re out there.”
The singer continues, “But at the time, when we were putting our thing together, we were influenced a lot by Mr. Bungle and all the other stage shows that we all loved growing up. We got sick of watching bands just doing their thing. And there’s no problem with doing that, but it’s, like, we wanted to do something.”
“In Iowa, it’s the hardest fucking place to get noticed in the United States,” the singer stated. “Pretty much farm fields, corn fields and hog lots all over the place around, and it’s just a terrible place to try to start a band. So you had to do everything you could. We had to get every good musician, the best of the best, get him to join the band. Like, ‘Come on. We’ve already got these guys in there. Come on, give it a try. It’ll be fun.'”
When Colsefni did eventually learn of Mushroomhead’s existence, he did notice at least one similarity. “The first time I saw Mushroomhead, I was in Painface and we were in Chicago, Illinois playing a show, and somebody brought a magazine over. He goes, ‘Look at this.’ And I’m looking at it. I’m, like, ‘The bass player has a pig mask. Those fuckers copied me.'”
The singer recalls, “I picked out the pig mask for Paul [Gray] because he was too lazy to go there and get it. Paul, you know this. So I just ran into the theatrical shop and grabbed the first thing I saw. I was, like, ‘Oh, a pig mask. That’ll work.’ I threw a padlock in the nose and gave it to him. He was, like, ‘That’s work. I can see through it.’ So it was a really weird thing.”
READ MORE: Anders Colsefni Reveals His Favorite Slipknot Song From Period After He Left the Band
The irony is that in modern day Colsefni has been touring with onetime Mushroomhead musician Waylon Reavis. The two musicians have discussed that history between the two bands, with Colsefni sharing, “Waylon and I have determined that it must have been just we were all influenced by the same shit being we were all in farmlands.”
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