Clown Exposure: Shadow Walker

One of the classic metal covers of the past decade is Slipknot's Iowa, which depicts an evil looking severed goat head casting an ugly shadow. The sharp horns fill up the top half of the frame, and the eyes are only visible in the bottom third of the shot. The entire cover is shiny silver, looking almost like a funhouse mirror.

The image was rendered by Stephen Seskis, the man who taught Slipknot percussionist Shawn 'Clown' Crahan everything he needed to know to start his own photographic explorations. Actually, Clown spent days shooting two goat heads in an effort to capture an image for the cover. But in the end, he didn't think anything he had shot worked for the album, so he handed over the reigns to Seskis.

For this week's 'Clown Exposure,' Crahan presents 'Shadow Walker,' one of the shots he took that he considered for the 'Iowa' cover. The stark, nearly black-and-white silhouette is of a full goat, not just a head. And the image is purposely blurry, giving the animal a dreamlike quality.

"I had two goats. Both this goat and the goat's head were used on 'Iowa,'" Crahan tells Noisecreep. "This is an alternate cover and it was just a set up concept. The goat's in a triangle, and the photo is all about the shadowing and the contrast about the goat. You can see the three legs. The fourth is back there, but it's disappearing a little bit. It was just a different vibe."

Crahan still loves the sinister, mysterious quality of 'Shadow Walker,' but when he considered where Slipknot were at that point in their career and the music they had recorded for 'Iowa,' he decided it wasn't right for the cover.

"I just didn't feel it represented what Iowa was gonna become," he says. "And that's what you do as an artist. You use what's best for everyone. I love sharing my art. Sometimes I make art with the intention of the feeling of the world, and I needed the feeling of all of us -- the maggots and the band. We needed to feel the same so we could go on with our pain, and this was just an image that I loved which didn't fit the definition for what I wanted. But it's still one of my favorite photos. It just feels like he's moving, he's missing a leg, he's in a triangle, he's on the edge."