SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor will release his debut solo album, “CMFT”, on October 2 via Roadrunner Records. The first two singles from the effort, “CMFT Must Be Stopped”, accompanied by a wrestling-themed music video, and “Black Eyes Blue”, have been unveiled and can be seen/heard below.
“CMFT Must Be Stopped” features hip-hop artists Tech N9ne and Kid Bookie. The track is accompanied by a DJay Brawner-directed music video, which sees Taylor taking the CMFT championship belt, while friends such as Marilyn Manson, Lars Ulrich, Rob Halford, Chris Jericho, ZillaKami and more make cameo appearances.
Complete list of “CMFT Must Be Stopped” cameo appearances (in alphabetical order):
* BABYMETAL
* Baron Corbin (WWE)
* Ben Bruce (ASKING ALEXANDRIA)
* Benji Webbe (SKINDRED)
* Caleb Shomo (BEARTOOTH)
* Chris Jericho (FOZZY)
* Corey Graves (WWE)
* Griff Taylor
* John 5 (ROB ZOMBIE)
* Lajon Witherspoon (SEVENDUST)
* Lars Ulrich (METALLICA)
* Lzzy Hale (HALESTORM)
* Marilyn Manson
* Matty Matheson (chef)
* Nergal (BEHEMOTH)
* Nikki Sixx (MÖTLEY CRÜE)
* Otep Shamaya (OTEP)
* Randy Blythe (LAMB OF GOD)
* Rob Halford (JUDAS PRIEST)
* Ronnie Radke (FALLING IN REVERSE)
* Maximum the Ryo-kun (MAXIMUM THE HORMONE)
* Scott Ian (ANTHRAX)
* STEEL PANTHER
* Tom Savini (special effects artist/actor)
* Zillakami (CITY MORGUE)
Taylor previously worked with Tech N9ne on a song called “Wither” in 2015, and with Kid Bookie on a reworked version of the rapper’s track “Stuck In My Ways” last year.
Taylor recorded the solo effort with his band consisting of Jason Christopher on bass, Dustin Schoenhofer on drums, and Zach Throne and Christian Martucci (STONE SOUR) on guitar.
Corey told Terry “Beez” Bezer of Knotfest.com’s “Mosh Talks With Beez” about the LP: “It was something I was planning to do anyway next year when I got off the road with SLIPKNOT, and, obviously, best-laid plans [were] just done and done [because of the coronavirus pandemic]. But I figured if this was the time to do it, why not try and do it. Me and my band quarantined. We social distanced for about two weeks, including our producer, Jay Ruston, who I worked with, and the people at the studio that I recorded at, which was Kevin Churko’s Hideout [Recording Studio in Las Vegas].
“This was stuff that we had been working on for a while,” he continued. “This was stuff that I had written as [recently] as the last SLIPKNOT tour and as far back as… There’s a song on here that dates back to when I was in high school, so that tells you how long I’ve been sitting on a lot of this material. And it’s just stuff that I’ve kind of had floating around that didn’t really fit with either band. It just had different energy and a different vibe.
“The more people asked me if I was ever gonna do a solo thing, I started going, ‘Well, I kind of know what it would sound like, because I’ve got all these songs that really don’t have a home anywhere else.’ And lo and behold, boom.
“We went in, we recorded 98 to 99 percent of the music live in the studio. The only thing we overdubbed was vocals and piano and some acoustic. And we did 25 songs in two and a half weeks.”
Taylor said about the musical direction of “CMFT”: “It’s everything I wanted it to be. There’s some SLADE in there, there’s some Johnny Cash, there’s some ALICE IN CHAINS. I mean, big choruses, fun rock, just huge solos — huge solos. It’s incredible. I, actually, two years ago, started teaching myself piano just so I can record this song that I wrote for my wife, and I was able to play it and record it. And it’s really good — it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever written.”
Pressed about how a song that he wrote back in high school sticks around for so long without him properly recording it and releasing it until now, Corey said: “I’ve kept almost every notebook of ideas that I’ve had since I first started really writing songs — since I was about 15 or 16. So I’ve got stuff dating all the way back then, just sitting in boxes. And every once in a while, the grand hoarder that I am, I’ll start going through stuff thinking that I’m gonna throw it away, and I [say to myself], ‘I can’t throw that away ’cause maybe this is gonna be a song someday.’ And lo and behold, I kept finding this notebook that had the first verse — at least the first verse and the start of the second — of [a song that ended up on the record]. I always remembered how it would start, and I was, like, ‘Where would we go from there?’ And it was actually the first song that I really put together for this. I finished it finally — after 30 years, I finally finished this song. And it’s killer. There’s a riff in it that feels almost like PANTERA in a way, but then there’s this overall vibe of THE CHARLIE DANIELS BAND, which is really, really cool. So it’s a mover, man, and it’s really, really good.”
Speaking about the LP’s first two singles, Corey said: “The overall vibe of this album is fun — it is party. You put this on when you wanna feel good. So there are actually two songs that we’re releasing at the same time. There’s one that is the overall crusher single — really great, huge chorus, big vibe. And then there’s another one that is just as fun on the completely other end of the spectrum that people are gonna hear and they are going to lose their minds.
“The way I’ve been looking at it is it’s like a futuristic throwback,” he explained. “Everything on this album is a hybrid of all these different genres that I’m really into. It’s a modern take on vibes that people have heard before, and yet I’ve taken them and kind of thrown them through this crazy filter to see what we get. Everybody who hears it is just blown away, so I’m really, really stoked.”
“CMFT” track listing:
01. HWY 666
02. Black Eyes Blue
03. Samantha’s Gone
04. Meine Lux
05. Halfway Down
06. Silverfish
07. Kansas
08. Culture Head
09. Everybody Dies On My Birthday
10. The Maria Fire
11. Home
12. CMFT Must Be Stopped (feat. Tech N9ne and Kid Bookie)
12. European Tour Bus Bathroom Song
