Slipknot's Corey Taylor recently did an interview with Las Vegas radio station KOMP 92.3 while at Knotfest this past weekend. He spoke in great detail about the conceptual and visual elements of Slipknot, stating that he feels like they share more in common with Tool than they do with a band like KISS.

"People don't realize: we look at everything," Taylor tells KOMP. "We look at the artwork, we look at the music, we look at the stage — everything. Everything's interconnected. Because it's so much more artistic and creative than just your typical shock-rock band. And I hate to use that even in acknowledgement with us, because there's so much more creativity that goes into this band than people… I would say we have more in common with Tool than we do with KISS, to be honest. And I love KISS, I love Tool, but, for me, it's a representation, and everything is connected, everything is a piece of each other. One can't exist without the other. So it's about putting all those things together, and that's what Tool does so beautifully."

One of Slipknot's most important conceptual elements is, obviously, the masks. As for Corey Taylor's .5: The Gray Chapter-era mask, he goes into details about what it represents. "This new mask, because of the story that we were telling, was about the face behind the face, the mask behind the mask," Taylor describes. "The level of emotion that we were sharing with the audience we'd never done before. We'd done anger, we'd done all these things, but it was a very real experience dealing with the grieving process [following the death of Slipknot bassist Paul Gray]. When you lose somebody like that, all of these gnarly emotions that you have to go through, I wanted to try and represent that with this mask. 'Cause if I had to wear the same mask over and over, it would start to feel less and less vital, less and less real, because that's just not me. My original mask was me then, but it's not me now. I mean, it's a little bit of me, but at the same time, you have to kind of keep evolving, or you're just spinning your wheels in the mud." [via Blabbermouth]

Corey Taylor made headlines at the recent Aftershock Festival when he took part in a wrestling match between WWE NXT superstars Baron Corbin and Samoa Joe, where Corey slapped Corbin, helping Samoa Joe pick up the victory.

See the Yearbook Photos of Corey Taylor + More Rock Stars

Corey Taylor Plays 'Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?' (Part 1)

More From Noisecreep