Corey Taylor Tickets

Singer-songwriter, Slipknot and Stone Sour leader Corey Taylor is coming to the UK in November for solo shows at Leeds, Wolverhampton, Manchester, Glasgow and London.

Fans of Corey Taylor, and all the music he touches, know one thing – expect the unexpected.  Expect an artist that revels in the cathartic power of music, who refuses to be boxed in, who can sit at the top of global album and radio charts, but still blaze new trails.  This fearlessness has served him well, with millions of fans along for the wild ride so far.  And now, on his first solo outing, Taylor answers only to his unbridled love of songwriting, of performance, and of the music that has inspired his journey, genres be damned. 

Over the past two decades, Taylor has built one of the most dynamic and thrilling careers in modern music. As the frontman for both Grammy Award-winning juggernaut Slipknot and rock icons Stone Sour, he’s turned out a series of platinum-selling albums and amassed a global fanbase that spans generations, with Slipknot’s latest full-length We Are Not Your Kind earning major critical praise and snagging the top spot on Rolling Stone’s Best Metal Albums of 2019 list. A multihyphenate phenomenon who’s also emerged as a beloved actor and author, he’s appeared in cult hits such as Doctor Who and landed on the New York Times best-seller list with his 2011 memoir Seven Deadly Sins. In yet another creative breakthrough, Taylor is now set to deliver his debut solo album CMFT—an eclectic selection of high-voltage songs just as thrillingly unpredictable as the artist himself.

An album fuelled by frenetic energy and unbridled joy, CMFT arrives as a full-tilt celebration of the musical forces that have shaped Taylor’s artistry. Over the course of 13 viscerally charged tracks, he takes on hardcore punk and glitter-rock, outlaw country and classic hip-hop, each moment revealing the depth of his connection to the genre at hand. Made up entirely of songs that Taylor carefully saved and set aside over the years—some dating as far back as his high-school days—CMFT ultimately echoes the utter lack of calculation behind its creation. “I think the reason these songs feel so alive is they weren’t written for any specific band or project,” says Taylor. “They were all just written out of that love of writing a song, and it gave everything a vibrancy that was really exciting as we put the album together.”

Despite its refusal to adhere to any one style, CMFT achieves a potent sonic unity thanks to the larger-than-life elements embedded in every track: shout-along harmonies, hugely anthemic choruses, massive guitar solos both brutal and beautiful. In forging the album’s volatile sound, Taylor teamed up with several of his closest musician-friends, including guitarists Christian Martucci (Stone Sour, Black Star Riders, Dee Dee Ramone) and Zachary Throne (Bruce Kulick, Pearl Aday), bassist Jason Christopher (Prong, Ministry, Sebastian Bach), and drummer Dustin Robert (Walls of Jericho, Premonitions of War). Co-produced by Taylor and Jay Ruston at The Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas, CMFT came to life in a two-and-a-half-week session that fully harnessed the musicians’ palpable chemistry and razor-sharp instincts. “The only direction I gave everyone was that I wanted the songs to sound like you’re seeing the best live show ever,” says Taylor. “We recorded live for most of the album, and I think you can really feel how much fun we’re having with every song.”

Kicking off with the rockabilly-infused frenzy of 'HWY 666,' CMFT rushes forward with a furious momentum that never lets up, even on its most introspective tracks. Not only a glimpse into the sheer vastness of Taylor’s musical brain, the album includes some of the most personal material he’s shared to date, such as the moody and mesmerizing 'Silverfish.' Being someone who’s struggled with depression but never found a medication that works, I’ve taken it upon myself to manage it through things like therapy and meditation—but sometimes it still comes creeping in,” Taylor says of the song’s origins. “‘Silverfish’ is about the dialogue that goes on in your head when you’re just trying to keep your compulsions and your problems at bay, instead of giving into the whims of whatever wants to bring you down.”

On the brighter end of CMFT’s emotional spectrum, 'Black Eyes Blue' unfolds as a gloriously soaring epic, the intensity of which is rightly matched by its ineffable tenderness. “That one started off as my attempt to write a Clash song, but then it became a song for my wife about an experience we had the first time we went to London together,” says Taylor. “It’s about getting to see the world with someone whose company you genuinely, wholeheartedly enjoy, and how that set the tone for our whole adventure together in life.”

Elsewhere on CMFT, Taylor presents a bit of biting social commentary, with the fantastically brooding “Culture Head” calling out the toxic effects of political fanaticism. “We’re all so weighed down by the constant barrage of chaos and noise in the world today, and it’s slowly but surely tearing us apart,” says Taylor. “If we could take a moment to get some perspective, we’d realize that nobody needs that noise—what we need is to focus on what’s going to put this society back together, so that we can stand on common ground.” Another track showcasing Taylor’s firebrand tendencies, 'CMFT Must Be Stopped' veers into hip-hop territory with its high-powered guest verses from rappers Tech N9ne and Kid Bookie. Built on a brilliant collision of kinetic rhythms and blistering guitar work, the song finds Taylor perfectly at home in hip-hop’s spirit of purposeful defiance. “I’ve been listening to hip-hop since I was a kid, and from the beginning it gave me that same excitement I got from punk rock,” he says. “There was real danger in it; it’s music that got in your face and challenged you and maybe changed the way you think.”

By the time CMFT closes out with the thrashing punk of 'European Tour Bus Bathroom Song,' Taylor has offered up everything from heart-on-sleeve piano ballads ('Home') to arena-ready party anthems ('Samantha’s Gone'), handling each with equal parts passion and precision. To that end, Taylor and his collaborators took tremendous care when it came to sculpting the album’s intricate sonic details, especially the galvanizing gang vocals that grace nearly every song. “We did the Queen method, where the harmonies are multiple people singing the same note and the tracks are all stacked on top of each other, so that it ends up almost sounding like a choir—just this incredibly full sound,” says Taylor. “Hearing that all come together was so much fun, because everyone in this band is such an amazing singer.”

Because recording for CMFT began just as stay-at-home orders were taking effect across the U.S., Taylor had his bandmates quarantine before heading into the studio, then tore through the sessions with relentless focus and drive. The recording process was so productive, in fact, the band ended up recording six acoustic versions of songs off CMFT, as well as a dozen covers of songs as stylistically diverse as Dead Boys’ “All This and More” and John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band’s “On the Dark Side.” “We just wanted to record some songs that would feel fun to play, and they all came together with so much life,” Taylor points out.

With the release of his first-ever solo effort, Taylor hopes that the raw and radiant vitality of CMFT might leave a lasting imprint on each listener. “I want everyone to get the same sense of joy we got from playing these songs, because to me that’s really the greatest thrill,” he says. “I’d love for people to hear this record and realize that music doesn’t always have to come from a place of tension or darkness or anger—it can come from a place of beauty, and from the pure happiness of just playing songs you love with some of your closest friends.”