Update: Police say an autopsy failed to determine how Slipknot bassist Paul Gray died. They say it will be weeks before toxicology results are available that could determine the cause of death.
Gray, 38, was found dead Monday by a hotel employee in a room at the TownPlace Suite in a Des Moines suburb- there was no indication of foul play.
The band won a Grammy in 2006 for best metal performance for the song "Before I Forget."
Slipknot kicked off a 2009 tour at the Xcel Energy Center in January 2009. Here's an excerpt from a Chris Riemenschneider interview talking about their grotesque masks.
Talking to the guys in Slipknot is always surprisingly amusing, and not because of their always ultra-serious, Spinal Tap-ian explanations of what their masks mean to them.
"It's our way of becoming more intimate with the music. It's a way for us to become unconscious of who we are," lead vocalist Corey Taylor said in 2002.
Last week, Shawn Crahan threw out this diatribe: "No one's going to understand (the masks) until we've been at it for 25 years and are up for the Hall of Fame or something like that. You'll be able to look back on the masks and see the development of the band. I've changed a lot over the course of Slipknot, and you can see that in the masks: the pain, the growth. And being the old dog in the band, I've made the most extreme mask for myself -- the most painful, dreaded thing, which makes it harder for me to deliver onstage."
No, what's really entertaining about a one-on-one with the Slipknot guys is that -- with their masks off and stitches taken out, anyway -- they sound like regular, everyday, blue-collar, hard-working, MGD-swilling Midwestern dudes and not freaks from a horror flick.
