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Out Of The Shadows

Since his shock exit from Slipknot, Joey Jordison has remained silent. For the first time, he opens up about the split, the debilitating condition that left him unable to walk, and how he's been reborn anew

Words: Dom Lawson • Pics: Travis Shinn

Metal Hammer 285 - August 2016 (google drive link) Full disclosure I pasted the main article from Metal Hammer's awful awful website because my hands are sad (from doing things like this, yes. Don't keep doing things if they hurt, yes even if you're super super excited about a guy.)

There is life after death. First, there’s Hell.

When the news first broke that Joey Jordison was no longer in Slipknot, it sent shockwaves around the world. Here was this icon of our world and one of the founding members of one of the greatest bands to emerge in all of 30 years suddenly, inexplicably gone. In the heavy wake of Paul Gray’s passing it seemed almost too great a blow for any band, even one with nine members. Anyone who knows their travails understands that they’re less a band and more like a dysfunctional family – had their problems caught up with them? But reappear they did, to the sound of a rapturously received album, and the three-ring circus of Knotfest, and yet still questions remained about the circumstances of Joey’s departure. Slipknot were tightlipped, and Joey? It was anyone’s guess.

I’m humbled to say that we now have Joey’s side of the story, and this month’s world-exclusive journey to Des Moines is one of the most powerful, saddening and inspirational stories you’ll read in these pages. Sure, there are the new records – Vimic and Sinsaeneum (sic) herald one of our world’s greatest musicians returning to the fold and from the sound of things we’ve some tremendous records ahead of us.

More importantly though, we have one of metal’s greatest figures back, and we couldn’t be more delighted to see him back on his feet – literally. To read Dom Lawson’s tale of a man who’s truly been there and back again, see p.38. Make sure you’re sitting down, because Travis Shinn’s remarkable photography is as stark as it it worth not one, but over 3,000 words.

Thank you for reading, and… Stay metal! Alex, Editör-In-Chief

Out Of The Shadows

Words: Dom Lawson • Pics: Travis Shinn

Joey Jordison unmasked: the ultimate interview

Part One - Revelation

“This is very important to me. You’re getting something that I have not told anyone. It’s very emotional. It’s fucking hardcore, man.”

Joey Jordison has got a few things to get off his chest. More importantly, the world has got a few questions for the erstwhile Slipknot alumnus and the 21st century’s most celebrated percussive polymath, not least because he has been resolutely off the radar for the last few years.

The last time Metal Hammer spoke directly to Joey, he was promoting his then-newly-formed band Scar The Martyr, who released their self-titled debut album in September 2013. Three months later, he was seemingly dismissed from Slipknot, the band he had enjoyed huge global success with ever since they exploded into our world back in 1999.

Since that startling news broke in December 2013, Joey has been conspicuous by his absence from our ears, eyes and screens. This being the age of endless social media speculation, his disappearance and departure from Slipknot have been widely discussed online, one commonly espoused theory being that the diminutive drummer had gone spectacularly off the rails and was simply unable to fulfill his usual duties, thus prompting his bandmates’ decision to effect an unexpected lineup change.

In truth, only Joey’s closest friends and business associates know what he’s been up to for the last couple of years, but as he warmly greets Hammer at the door of the house he shares with girlfriend Amanda in Des Moines, it’s immediately apparent that today’s interview is much more than just an opportunity to herald the arrival of not one, but two new bands and Joey’s wholesale return to action. Instead, this is what he describes as “an opportunity to tell everyone what the fuck has been going on”. And it’s almost certainly not what anyone is expecting.

“It was at the end of the memorial shows we did for Paul,” Joey begins, referencing the death of bandmate Paul Gray and the subsequent world tour that began in the summer of 2011 and continued until August 2012. “We were in Canada, at the end of my last run of shows with Slipknot, and something happened to me but I didn’t know what it was. I was super ill. You can be sick and still play, but this was something I’d never felt in my life before.

“We found out that what I have is acute transverse myelitis. It’s a neurological condition that hits your spinal cord and it wiped my legs out completely. It’s like having your legs cut off, basically. I played those last couple of shows and it scared the living shit out of me. I didn’t know what it was. Everyone thought I was fucked up, but it wasn’t the case. I wasn’t even drinking. Everything was straight-laced and fucking perfect. Everything was on point. But I had to be carried to the stage…”

Joey pauses, wincing at the memory. “The pain was something I’d never experienced in my life before, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

When he arrived home from the Slipknot tour, Joey could barely walk. On August 21, 2012, he was admitted to Mercy West hospital in Des Moines, diagnosed with some form of leg paralysis but unaware of exactly how or why this was happening to him. Ten days later, he was transferred to the neurological unit at University Of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City, understandably terrified and extremely confused about his physical deterioration.

“It was fucking bad, dude,” he recalls. “My lady has everything documented. I got struck with this fucking thing that I couldn’t control. The doctors said I might not be able to walk again. Today, I can almost run, but back then I couldn’t even stand up. I was bed-ridden. If I wanted to turn over in bed, I had to move my legs with my hands. I was in and out of the hospital for months.

“Some beautiful people have helped me out and got me back stronger and taught me how to walk again, but at that moment my whole life was screwed, man. Acute transverse myelitis is a fucked-up disease and a lot of people don’t recover from it and they’re paralysed forever.”

After having braces fitted to prevent his weakened legs from buckling, Joey was finally discharged from hospital in October 2012. Thus began an extremely lengthy, challenging and physically exhausting regime of physical and occupational therapy, as Joey tried to summon the energy and determination to beat the bizarre neurological condition that had wrenched the carpet from under his feet and left him both horribly vulnerable and understandably bewildered.

Early in 2013, work began on Scar The Martyr’s debut album, as a further batch of Slipknot shows in Japan and Europe – including a headline slot at Download – loomed over the horizon. Still recovering from the worst of his illness, Joey somehow managed to recover to the point where he was able to perform at those gigs, after which he threw himself wholeheartedly into launching Scar The Martyr by hitting the road as main support to Danzig in the US.

All the while, of course, his global army of admirers remained entirely in the dark about the turmoil and trials going on behind the scenes. It was widely noted that Joey was looking overweight and far from healthy during Scar The Martyr’s debut UK tour, but the conclusions that most people were jumping to – in essence, that he had a problem with drugs and/or drink – were completely off target. Unfortunately, when Slipknot announced on December 12, 2013, that they were to forge ahead without their talismanic drummer, those rumours seemed to gain a little extra momentum.

“Yeah, and that’s why I love being able to do this interview, because finally I get to tell the fucking truth!” Joey declares. “It’s been really frustrating, but I can only bless the people that have been around me and helped me to get back to this point. And this is what I want to clarify for my fans…” – he punches his hand to emphasise the importance of this statement – “…it had nothing to do with fucking drugs or fucking alcohol!”

Several times during our interview, Joey’s eyes fill with tears. It’s abundantly clear that the extraordinary effort required to confront acute transverse myelitis and doggedly chase a light at the end of a seriously dark and bleak tunnel has taken a lot out of him, particularly on an emotional level. But now that he is about to click into top gear once again, via new bands Vimic and Sinsaenum, Joey is channeling his energies towards a cathartic clearing of the decks, and setting people straight about his life over the last five years is top of the agenda.

“Life takes you on weird trips and you just have to hold on, ride the wave and be as strong as you fucking can,” he shrugs. “I’ve been through so much fucking shit over the last few years and people just don’t know.”

Part Two - Struggle

The news that Joey had seemingly been sacked from Slipknot came as a huge shock to everyone, even without the additional knowledge of his devastating health problems. From the band’s enormous fanbase, through to many of us in the metal world that have always known him to be, at the very least, a wholly dedicated and passionate member of that 18-legged, arena-smashing entity, it was a wildly unexpected turn of events.

The band’s own public statements at the time took a predictably passive course, the relatively benign implication being that Joey and his former comrades were simply heading in different creative directions and could no longer work together effectively.

On January 2, 2014, he made his own statement on Facebook, making it plain that as far as he was concerned, there was no mutual agreement and he had been fired from Slipknot for reasons unknown.

“I was laying in bed with my lady, I’d been in rehabilitation for my health issues but everything was good, and the next thing I know…” he pauses, visibly upset. “No band meeting? None. Anything from management? No, nothing. All I got was a stupid fucking email saying that I was out of the band that I busted my ass my whole life to fucking create, you know?

“It was the weirdest fucking thing. I can’t imagine just sending Corey or Shawn or Mick a fucking letter, without a band meeting. We’re friends and we’ve been through so much shit together, but that was all it was, a fucking letter. That’s exactly what happened and it was hurtful, man. I didn’t deserve that shit after what I’d done and everything I’d been through.”

In light of revelations about his state of health at the time, it does seem an unusually abrupt way to bring such a longstanding partnership to an end. Joey even claims to have written and demoed a batch of new material, aided by Slipknot’s then-touring bassist Donnie Steele, and circulated it among his bandmates in an attempt to get the compositional ball rolling. But, according to the drummer, no one got back to him to discuss the new songs: subtle evidence, perhaps, that wires were distinctly crossed.

“They got confused about my health issues, and obviously even I didn’t know what it was at first,” Joey sighs. “They thought I was fucked-up on drugs, which I wasn’t at all. I don’t blame them for being concerned, but when you’re friends and you’ve been through so much stuff, you fucking talk to each other. But I harbour no bad feelings toward them at all, because I’ve moved on with my life. I’m happier than I’ve been in years. You need to move on, close the fucking chapter and, in the end, it is what it is.”

It is a testament to the positive way Joey has endeavoured to overcome his severe health problems that today, even after having been unceremoniously ejected from one of the biggest metal bands on the planet, he is hearteningly sanguine about the way things have turned out.

During our conversation, he repeatedly declares how grateful he is for the friends, family and life that he has, and even when discussing the end of his tenure as Slipknot’s drummer, he is eager to state how much he still loves and admires his former bandmates. What is perhaps more surprising is that Joey not only made a point of checking out .5: The Gray Chapter, the album Slipknot made without him and released in 2014, but is also effusive in his praise for it.

“Honestly, I have a long history with those guys, so I give them the respect they deserve and I listened to the whole record multiple times,” he smiles. “And I think it’s great! It’s fucking cool and I’m glad they moved on. I’m not like, ‘I’m not gonna give them respect!’ – I’m not a coward like that. I’m glad they’re carrying on the name, because what’s important is the fans. There’s no stupid battle going on. There’s no point in saying, ‘Fuck them!’

“No, I’ve been through so many things with those guys and I love them very much. What’s hurtful is that the way it [being fired] went down was not fucking right. That’s all I want to say. The way they did it was fucking cowardly. It was fucked up. But the love in my heart for those guys, that stays the same.”

It is at this point that Metal Hammer asks the inevitable and unavoidable question: despite everything that has happened, would Joey be willing to rejoin Slipknot further down the line? As much as his successor, Jay Weinberg, has acquitted himself brilliantly while filling the shoes of a contemporary drumming legend, it’s hard to deny that most Slipknot fans would be beside themselves with joy if Joey were to return to the fold. He takes a deep, measured inward breath and fixes us with a stern stare…

“Let me think about how to answer that, because it’s a big one,” he nods. “Honestly, I’m not trying to be dramatic, but if that was brought up, what I’d want to do would be to get together. Not just have a phone call or some stupid email. I’d want to see them, just hug it out and feel that energy that we had when we were fucking young and hungry and all that shit. They’re my brothers. We’d hug and talk and do shit like we used to do. We used to sit up all night long planning this shit and what we wanted to do. So that’s how I’d wanna do it. It’d have to be in person. If it happened, that would be fucking awesome, but only time will tell.”

Part Three - Rebirth

Back in the here and now, Joey Jordison is well on his way to being fighting fit once again. His recovery is still ongoing, of course, and daily trips to see his trainer at the local gym have now become an essential part of his day-to-day schedule, but as he speaks, he radiates sincere positivity. That said, the effort it has taken Joey to get from suddenly and horrifyingly being robbed of the use of his legs to a point where he is able to unveil two brand new albums with different bands is etched into his subtly expressive face.

He and better half Amanda have kept a detailed scrapbook of photos and other memorabilia from the long, hard road back from the onset of transverse myelitis. They allow us to leaf through it, and it brings the jarring reality of Joey’s last few years vividly to life. It’s a litany of woes, pain and frustration that many of us would regard as insurmountable, but even when faced with yet another grim obstacle, when he fell and broke his leg while in the studio recording Vimic’s debut album in the autumn of 2014, leading to his leg being cut in half and the insertion of steel rods and bolts, Joey’s determination to prevail and come back stronger than ever has been unwavering.

“I did question everything, like, ‘What am I going to do?’, not knowing if I was going to recover,” he admits. “It hurt a lot. It was a big question. But there was a definite point where I thought about all the blessings I’ve been given in life, being part of Slipknot and playing with Korn and Ministry and Rob Zombie and doing Roadrunner United and all those things, and you look at that and you’re grateful, and so you bust your ass to get back. I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I do not quit. I’ve got fans I’ve got to take care of, you know? So there’s no hiding right now.”

If you want to know what the opposite of hiding sounds like, you need only lend an ear to either or both of the new records that Joey is releasing this summer. The first is Echoes Of The Tortured, the debut album from Sinsaenum, Joey’s collaboration with Dragonforce’s Frédéric Leclercq and a host of underground luminaries. A monstrous but eminently accessible death metal record, its jaw-shattering eruptions of blastbeats and epic fury showcase the full extent of Joey’s physical recovery in no uncertain terms.

The second is Open Your Omen, the first album from Vimic, which is essentially Scar The Martyr with a new vocalist, former Korn percussionist and back-up singer Kalen Chase. It’s a sharper, more focused record than its (sort of) predecessor, planting Joey firmly back in belligerent mainstream metal territory, with plenty of the huge hooks and irresistible riffs that his loyal fans will be feverishly anticipating. But beyond the new music itself, Joey’s true focus is on the unparalleled joy he is currently experiencing as he escapes the nightmare of the last few years and returns to what he does best.

“This is a rebirth, and reaching this point is the ultimate reward,” he states. “It’s like having the ultimate trophies, having these two bands. These opportunities are coming back to me and it feels like a complete renewal. These are real bands, not side-projects. Everything I do goes at 100%… maybe even 666%, ha ha!

“At a certain age, a lot of people] become vegetarians or they find religion, but I’m never gonna stop being a fucking weirdo and a fucking metalhead! You wake up one day and you realise that nothing’s ever gonna change and you’re fucking committed. I’ve been like that since I was five years old, man.

“Right now, I just want to keep creating. These bands are two huge fucking journeys for me. It’s like when you see a rollercoaster that you’ve never ridden before, and you’re fucking scared, but you’re in line and waiting, like I am now, and then once you step on? You’re in!”

There are a few lessons to be learned from the story of Joey Jordison’s last few traumatic years. Firstly, maybe we should all be slightly less eager to jump to hasty conclusions when faced with only one side of a story (or, indeed, no verified information whatsoever). Secondly, never underestimate the strength, persistence, passion and potential of the human spirit.

“The most pertinent lesson of all, however, is one we all should have learned a long time ago: Joey Jordison is an unstoppable force of nature and, after fighting the toughest battle of his entire life, he’s primed and ready to make up for lost time and to remind the world that loud, angry, fucked up and furious music remains the best medicine of all.

“I have this weird-ass condition, but it doesn’t limit me and I’m getting better all the time,” he concludes with a confident grin. “I can play just as fast, or faster, than I ever have. Everything is fucking cool and I’m at the gym every day and it’s all going well. That helps me out so much.

“I went through some serious fucking shit. People didn’t know and I can’t blame them for that. But the thing is, you get up in the morning and you look in the mirror, and then you go off and fucking do it. You live your life the way you want to, and get the work done! What else can I say, dude? It’s good to tell my story. I’m fucking back and I’m ready to go full force. This is the best fucking job in the world. I’m never gonna stop.”

What Is Transverse Myelitis?

We spoke to Lew Gray, secretary of UK charity the Transverse Myelitis Society, to understand what Joey’s batling…

Can you explain what the condition means? Lew: “Transverse myelitis is an inflammation of the spinal cord. You have a lot of nerves doing different things in your spinal cord, so the facts of each case depend on which part of the spinal cord is affected. It can be high in the spinal cord affecting the arms, or you may struggle to breathe because the muscles in your lungs don’t work. It could be lower, affecting different sensory nerves. Some people with transverse myelitis can walk but can’t feel the floor beneath their feet, or they can’t feel hot and cold or pain. We think there are about 250 cases a year in the UK.”

Does it typically come on quickly or is it more of a gradual process? “It can be either. A lot of people are paralysed within an hour or two. But then for other people it can be very gradual and come and go over a period of months. It takes some people years to get a diagnosis.”

What treatment is available? “Really, the only treatment is to dose you with steroids. They will reduce the inflammation, and therefore you’re not curing it, you’re minimising the damage until it goes away by itself. Physiotherapy is very important. Almost everyone gets some spontaneous recovery over time after transverse myelitis, but the body and mind ‘forget’ how to use muscles and nerves that are not working, so the purpose of neurophysiotherapy is to ‘guide’ the recovery.”

What is the long-term prognosis for someone with transverse myelitis? “The nerves are capable of regenerating themselves. Nobody can predict though how well they will regenerate, how long it will take, or if they will at all. The majority of people get improvement, but there is no cast-iron guarantee.”

How common are relapses? “We do know people who have had recurrences, however that is rare. Sometimes a reoccurrence of transverse myelitis leads to a diagnosis of MS [multiple sclerosis].”

For more on the Transverse Myelitis Society, visit www.myelitis.org.uk

Beating The Odds

How Joey Jordison fought his way back from paralysis to prosperity

The full extent of Joey’s arduous battle with acute transverse myelitis is brought into sharp focus when we visit Absolute Performance Therapy in Waukee, Des Moines. Joey spent months here, working on his recovery, and the mere fact that today he is able to walk through the front door without assistance speaks volumes about what he has achieved. His therapist, Alyssa Subbert, has nothing but praise for his determined approach.

“Being stubborn helped the most!” she laughs. “To go from being someone who could do anything to not being able to get out of a chair, then to get back to being able to do everything again, it was a huge process. He wanted to drum again so bad, and as long as we made every exercise about drumming, he’d do it. He was very stubborn and very ornery, but he’d work and work until his body was too sore.”

Gruelling physical work aside, it is obvious that Joey’s time at APT was also hugely emotional. He hasn’t been back since finishing his treatment, and there are tears as he and Alyssa recall the intense therapy sessions and ferocious perseverance and teamwork that were needed to make each successive triumph a reality along the way.

“This was a huge wake-up call to Joey’s health and lifestyle, and how physical his job is,” Alyssa states. “When you’ve done something like that forever, you have no concept of it. He has to play in a drum set that rotates and goes upside down?! It’s not a regular job, sitting at a computer. We even practised mobbing him! Does he have balance when a whole bunch of people mob him, you know? It’s a whole different life, and very physical. So this was a completely unique process we went through.”

Joey’s physical therapy may be over, but his daily trips to local gym Life Time Athletic are an essential part of his recovery, not to mention his ability to play drums with the power and skill that fans have come to expect. His personal trainer, Caleb Herman, is a Slipknot fan who’s full of admiration for his client’s dedication.

“When Joey came in, he could hardly walk,” Caleb recalls. “Now he’s pressing 700lbs and he can do a step above what most people can do. He’s got one of the strongest back muscle groups I’ve ever seen. He couldn’t stand without help, but now he can stand up by himself, so his progress has been awesome. When he sees progress, he becomes motivated, and he tells me he gets the chills, and that gives me the chills. It’s really exciting to see him get to this point.”

Battle Of The Bands

After a long absence from our world, Joey’s returning with two new projects. But how do Vimic and Sinsaenum stack up against each other?

Vimic

Members: Joey Jordison (drums), Kalen Chase (vocals), Matt Tarach (keyboards), Jed Simon (guitar), Kyle Konkiel (bass). Sound: Crunchy, state-of-the-art modern metal with big, anthemic melodies and plenty of snotty aggression. Image: Lots of black leather, long hair, beards and menacing scowls. Sample lyric: ‘Simple skeletons, playing God again/We’re getting higher, we’re getting higher, and the truth will set us free’ (Simple Skeletons). Drumming: Lashings of classic Joey, from that Slipknot stomp and big, muscular grooves to bursts of high-velocity blasting. Joey says: “Scar The Martyr was the blueprint, but we wiped the slate clean. This is heavy shit. Kalen killed it on this record.” For fans of: Slipknot, Disturbed, Fear Factory. Check out: Earth Stood Still. Lurching, syncopated grooves and soaring, post-grunge melodies collide in a brutish, multi-tempo anthem that deftly showcases singer Kalen’s versatility.

Sinsaenum

Members: Joey Jordison (drums), Frédéric Leclercq (guitar), Heimoth (bass), Attila Csihar (vocals), Sean Zatorsky (vocals), Stéphane Buriez (guitar). Sound: Epic, imperious, blackened death metal with tons of eerie atmosphere. Image: Classic, dark, extreme metal attitude with a dash of theatrical corpse paint and a blood-splattered logo. Sample lyric: ‘We are the pain inside your head/We are the sorrow in your soul/We are the fire/We are the rusty nails’ (Army Of Chaos). Drumming: A masterclass in death metal precision and power. Proof that Joey is back and blazing. Joey says: “Sinsaenum is probably one of the most extreme and proficient bands I have ever been in. These guys are fucking on point at all times. We’re a fucking army!” For fans of: Morbid Angel, Dimmu Borgir, Behemoth. Check out: Inverted Cross. It’s blistering, heads-down death metal grandeur with anti-Christian lyrics, fret-melting solos and countless warped twists and turns.

Sin City

As well as making his comeback with Vimic, Joey Jordison’s taken up the drum stool for death metal project Sinsaenum. Mastermind and Dragonforce bassist Frédéric Leclercq explains how it came thundering to life

Words: Dayal Patterson

While Vimic represents a beefed-up reboot of Scar The Martyr, Joey’s also been behind the kit for a second, brand new band - Sinsaenum. The brainchild of Dragonforce bassist Frédéric Leclercq, it’s a more murky blend of death and black metal, featuring the twosome alongside some of the leading lights of the extreme scene, including dual vocals from Mayhem’s Attila Csihar and Dååth’s Sean Zatorsky. We asked Frédéric what the supergroup have planned for their dark future.

How did Sinsaenum first come about? Frédéric: “Oh Christ, even I have trouble remembering when it started! I always wrote death metal songs. I started to write in 1998, then I was doing something else [he played in the French bands Memoria and Heavenly], and I’m still doing something else, with Dragonforce. The first person I spoke to was Stéphane [Buriez, guitar] from Loudblast. It must’ve been in 2010 that we said, ‘Let’s really do something about it.’”

How did Joey get involved? “I kept writing more songs, and one day in 2013 I got a text from Joey. We call each other ‘Morbid Angel” – don’t ask why – so the text said, ‘Morbid Angel, what you up to?’ I was like, ‘Well, I just got back from tour… talking about Morbid Angel, I have these death metal songs.’ He was like, ‘You should send them to me!’ Two days later, he came back like, ‘Fuck yeah, that’s really cool. Who’s playing drums? I want to do it.’ So I started to ask more people that I had in mind.”

How did you guys meet? “We did the Mayhem tour together in the US, in 2008. One day drinking we were talking about death metal, and then we got to talking about it more and more. That’s how you get to know people – you find what you have in common. We had drinking and Morbid Angel.”

What about the other guys? “Stéphane I’ve known for 20 years. I played in a band in my hometown, Charleville-Mézières, and we supported his band, Loudblast. They were a big influence, and the first death metal band I heard. We kept in touch because France is a small country when it comes to metal. With [bassist] Heimoth from [French black metal band] Seth, it’s the same – there’s a small metal community. Dragonforce and Mayhem did a festival together, and Attila came onto the bus and said: ‘My son is a fan and would love an autograph – by the way, I’m the vocalist of Mayhem.’ He’s such a nice person – maybe you shouldn’t write that, keep the mystery! Sean and I met when Dååth was opening for Dragonforce in 2009. I really liked his voice and his attitude.”

How much music was written before you started working with them? “When Joey sent that text, all the songs were half-written, because I’ve a tendency to write a song with just a verse and a chorus, maybe a mid-section, because I know the rest is in my head. So when he said, ‘I’m interested,’ I was like, ‘Oh shit, I have to finish the songs!’ I sent out files, because it was clear that people trusted my ‘vision’. They didn’t want to change too much. I had to finalise lyrics with Sean and Attila, and Stéphane contributed to the structure. Joey added some fills. I decided to make it a concept album using interludes like Tiamat, or Pestilence, or even Type O Negative did to create atmosphere, so I had to write those.”

What was it like working with your heroes? “I felt like a kid in a toy store! Being in a studio with Attila singing songs that I wrote, and saying, ‘Oh, you should do this song like [Mayhem’s] De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, and him being like, [adopts a Hungarian accent] ‘OK bro’, it’s like ‘Fuck, this is happening!’ I shouldn’t sound so excited, ‘cause this is black and death metal, but I had a big smile during the whole process – we all did. On Army Of Chaos we have Schmier from Destruction and Mika and Mirai from Sigh. Mika and Mirai are good friends of mine and are doing the big choirs, the choruses… like Sepultura’s Stronger Than Hate [from 1989’s Beneath The Remains]. I remember reading the booklet as a kid… they had the guys from Obituary and Atheist on it, and I was like, ‘Fuck, that’s cool.’ And it’s Schmier who’s singing on the last pre-chorus.

Did Joey’s health battles affect Sinsaenum? “Not at all. He speaks about it way better than I, so I won’t comment on that. I’ve kept away from all the troubles. I was like, ‘I’m a friend. If you want to talk, I’ll listen, but I just want to make sure you’re happy.’ As far as health problems, he was fine – he killed the drums. I don’t know how he did it, but he said, ‘Dude, I’m on fire.’ He was angry, I guess.”

Will Sinsaenum tour? “It’s definitely something we want to do, but there’s no rush. I want to do everything the same way I lived it as a kid. These bands I loved, I loved their albums, but I didn’t see them live for a long time and it didn’t bother me. I want people to digest the album – there’s a lot of information on there. Plus, we’re all busy; it’s difficult to get us all in a room. We rehearsed before doing the videos, and being in the same room, it was like, ‘Fucking hell.’”

What’s happening with Dragonforce right now? “We’re doing summer festivals and writing the new album that will come out next year, so I have to juggle between doing Sinsaenum stuff and writing and recording with Dragonforce. So my head is about to explode, but that’s fine!”

What do you get from Sinsaenum that you don’t get with Dragonforce? “This is really the music I love. I like Dragonforce stuff, and I write more of it now, but sometimes I don’t agree with all the decisions. With Sinsaenum, from A to Z it is exactly what I want. I guess it’s my baby. It gives me a way to express the dark side of myself and show it to people – if they care or not, that’s another issue!”

Sinsaenum release Echoes Of The Tortured on July 29 via Earmusic

#after ten thousand years here it is #if you want anything else from this issue scanned just lemme know (there's already a couple other pages in the google drive folder)#joey jordison #sinsaenum #vimic #slipknot #metal hammer 285 aug 16 #those photos with the black stuff dripping down his face are truly egregious i am incredibly gay why would metal hammer do this to me #why not give us pictures of all the cats huh??#like yaknow instead of his leg with all the stitches. the other four cats. just sayin #fred is so ae;gihas;kdf;h #interview

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coquelicoq · 11 months

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this post is brought to you by: la lettre c!

[previously: la lettre b]

i recently spent nearly a month reading the C section of this french dictionary. and by gum now you are going to hear about it!!

stats

percentage of dico taken up by C words: 10.6% (yeah you heard me. a tenth of this dictionary is just for the letter C. you've been warned)

percentage of dico read (as of the end of the C section): 23.5%

rate and duration: 3 pages/day for 27 days

total entries: 3449

rows added to my vocabulary spreadsheet: 708 😅

fun facts

more pages in this dico are devoted to words starting with C than with any other letter! which if you think about it makes sense. not only can a word-initial c be followed by any vowel, it can be followed by h, l, and r, plus the prefix con/com- is EXTREMELY generative…19 of the 81 pages are dedicated just to words that start with con or com (over a page of which are actually words that start with contre). i love that you get nearly 1/4 of the way through this dictionary before you even get to the 4th letter of the 26-letter alphabet.

as mentioned in the B post, there sure are a lot of slang words meaning "head" that start with c. you've got your caboche (hobnail). you've got your cafetière (coffeemaker). you've got your carafe (carafe) or your carafon (small carafe). you've got your chou (cabbage). you've got your ciboulot (diminutive of ciboule, which means head). you've got your citron (lemon). shockingly coco (coconut) is not slang for noggin to my knowledge…but it's not like there's a one-to-one mapping between "round things" and "things that are slang for noggin", or we wouldn't be in this situation with carafe, now would we?

speaking of noggins, there are also a lot of idioms meaning "to wrack one's brain" that were in the C section, either because the "wrack" word starts with a c or because the "brain" word does: se casser la tête (casser: break), se creuser le ciboulot/la cervelle/la tête/les méninges (creuser: dig).

page hogs

(entries taking up 1/6 of a page or more)

carte

chaîne

charger

chien

compte

conseil

corde

corps

côté

couleur

coup

coupe

couper

courir

cours

croire

culture

i knew coup would be big, and i wasn't surprised by corps or cours, but damn there are a lot more chien idioms than i was expecting!

🤯 momence

i looked up the etymology of un casanier/une casanière (homebody) expecting it to be pretty straightforward given the spanish casa meaning house, but it actually came from an italian word meaning "moneylender"??? which was then influenced by the word that means house, but still. not sure i buy the logical leap made in the CNRTL entry for casanier that the "homebody" sense "s'explique prob[ablement] par le fait que les prêteurs italiens installés en France semblaient tenus à résider en un lieu précis, évolution favorisée par l'infl[uence] de case* « maison », fréquent au XVIe s". yeah but were italian moneylenders unique in liking to stay in one spot? i kinda doubt it…

chevronné(e): experienced, seasoned, highly qualified. one of my favorite things about this project is how much i am learning about etymology just because words from the same root whose meanings have since diverged still often occur near each other in the dictionary. chevronné comes right after chevron, which is a pattern in the shape of a V (or upside-down V). on a military uniform, chevrons indicate an officer's rank. so someone who is chevronné is someone who wears a lot of chevrons because they have a high rank, which generally indicates a lot of experience.

and if you're wondering why chevron means an inverted V shape, another meaning of chevron is "rafter", as in, the beams in a roof that slope to either side…forming an inverted V shape. and why is that beam called a chevron? well, we're getting into speculation now*, but chevron comes a few entries after chèvre, goat. according to this dictionary, chèvre is also another word for chevalet, which means "sawhorse" and comes from the word cheval (horse). now, chèvre and cheval, though they look similar in french, come from completely different latin roots. but goats and horses are both four-legged animals, and a sawhorse is, of course, a support structure made of two upside-down Vs that look like the two pairs of legs of a four-legged animal. so i'm not sure of the exact chain of causality here, but it does seem plausible that the inverted V came to be called a chevron because of its resemblance to a pair of legs? of some animal or another??

*(the CNRTL etymology entry for chevron claims that it comes from a latin word that meant both goat and chevron, capreolus, but i haven't been able to confirm for myself that capreolus meant chevron so am not taking that as gospel.)

couché(e) en chien de fusil: lying curled up in a ball/in the fetal position. the fun thing about this one is that there's this passage in les mis where gavroche notices that the pistol he's stolen from a shop window "n'avait pas de chien." this confused the hell out of me when i read it. the pistol didn't have a dog? why the fuck would the pistol have a dog??? eventually i managed to wrap my head around the idea that chien might mean something other than "dog" in the context of a pistol, and once my mind was opened to that revolutionary possibility it didn't take long to discover that the hammer of a gun is called a chien. so when i got to this entry in the dictionary, i was like yeah, yeah, le chien de fusil, we've all seen it. the problem is i still don't really get how that translates to the fetal position. they just don't seem that similar to me? so this one is a work in progress.

être à la colle: live together, be shacked up. (colle means glue.) i also like vivre en concubinage, which means the same thing. you can imagine my surprise when i got to concubinage and finally learned it does not mean "the state of having concubines" as i had been assuming. i would see it in like news articles about modern french people and be like "that doesn't seem right, but i don't know enough about french culture to dispute it."

somewhat relatedly, i don't think i had ever come across et consorts ("and company") in the wild before reaching its entry in the dictionary, which is good because i'm sure i would have grossly misinterpreted it as well. on balance i think english getting so much vocab from french does make learning french vocab much easier than it would be otherwise, but there are times when it would really help to be bringing to the table fewer preconceived notions about the meaning of words lol.

let's talk about compris(e). so service (non) compris (service (not) included (in the price of something)) is one of the phrases i learned back when i was a kid who didn't know any french, because i was going to france and it was in some guidebook or other. then y compris (including) caught my eye very early on in my french education because i didn't know what the y was doing in there and i probably latched onto it because it looked like spanish. (the french word y has a completely different meaning than the spanish word y, but i didn't know that at the time because i hadn't learned about adverbial pronouns yet, and learning "y compris" didn't help me figure it out because it seemed to make total sense for a phrase which means "including" to contain a word meaning "and". but i digress.) and of course i learned the verb comprendre (understand) in year 1 of french. but it was not until now, TWENTY YEARS LATER, that i put together that the compris in service compris and y compris is...THE PAST PARTICIPLE OF COMPRENDRE! HELLO!!! like i knew that compris is the pp of comprendre, but i never connected it with those other expressions! and the english word comprehend also has both "understand" and "include" senses (think lizzy saying "you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman" in pride and prejudice), so all the pieces were there all along! truly i am surrounded by countless wonders just waiting to be discovered.

i am continuing to take note of verbs that no one ever told me take être as auxiliary. the first one since accourir is convenir de [qqch], but it seems to only take être in some circumstances and i'm not really clear on what they are…just in literature or when being formal? the jury is out. this one is less mindblowing than accourir because it does have venir right there in it, which doesn't mean that it obviously must take être, but i feel a little more primed to accept it. accourir was just a total shock. i'm still feeling the reverberations.

favorite words to pronounce

cessation [sesasjɔ̃]

champignonnière [ʃɑ̃piɲɔnjɛʀ]

cliquetis [klik(ə)ti]

clopin-clopant [klɔpɛ̃klɔpɑ̃]

cocotte [kɔkɔt]

coléoptère [kɔleɔptɛʀ]

compensation [kɔ̃pɑ̃sasjɔ̃]

consciencieusement [kɔ̃sjɑ̃sjøzəmɑ̃]

contentement [kɔ̃tɑ̃tmɑ̃]

coquelicot [kɔkliko]

cumulus [kymylys]

cyclique [siklik]

so the mouthfeel in the C section is simply exquisite. sometimes i just say "consciencieusement" out of nowhere because it soothes me. that said, possibly my least favorite word to pronounce in the entire french language (yes even more than procureur du roi) also starts with C: chirurgie. like damn. have mercy. also found myself struggling with condamner (apparently you don't pronounce the m and you don't nasalize the vowel before it. IS THIS EVEN FRENCH????), construire (dedicating my life to learning synonyms for every sense of this word so i never have to say it out loud), and coopérant (no, not the double o! please, i'll do anything!).

favorite words period

c'est le cadet de mes soucis: that's the least of my worries. cadet is also the word you would use to talk about a younger sibling, like ma sœur cadette, so that's the association i have with it. out of all my worries, this one is the baby. aww.

avoir le cafard: have the blues, feel depressed, be down in the dumps. un cafard is a cockroach btw. i'm gonna need my fellow anglophones to either learn this french expression or at the very least calque it into english because i use it all the time now. lads i got the roach today…yeah no i'm gonna have to reschedule, it's that damn roach…

c'est fort du café: that's a bit much, that's going too far, that's pushing it. the coffee is too damn strong! dial it back people!

the C section contains both cahin-caha (with difficulty) and clopin-clopant (with a limp, falteringly). i'm always a sucker for (quasi-)reduplication! and with these two in particular, i like the way that the sounds rock back and forth, like an aural representation of the action they would describe.

renvoyer/remettre [qqch] aux calendes grecques: postpone [sth] indefinitely. i was confused by this one because i looked up calendes and naturally it translates as calends, which as a former latin student i know to be the first day of the month (just as the ides is a specific day in the middle of the month) in the ancient roman calendar. but according to this random website whose trustworthiness i have not determined, that's precisely the point: to postpone something until the calends of the greeks is to never do it, because the greek calendar doesn't even HAVE a calends. makes me think of that episode of parks & rec when ron had like 90 meetings on the same day because april had been scheduling all his meetings for march 31st, thinking that march only has 30 days. damn, should have scheduled them all for the greek calends. the french could have told her that.

calter/caleter ([qqch]): shift [sth], move [sth]; scram, scat, leg it. i will just be scooping this up and squirreling it away in my hoard of ways to talk about getting the hell out of dodge, thank you…

faire un câlin is to hug…or to have sex!! why does french keep doing this to me. i just want some affection-related words that are not also sex slang, is that so much to ask??

callipyge: endowed with a nice butt. i am not making this up, it is a word and it is in this pocket french dictionary. would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for the meeting at which they decided to keep this one in. "callipyge? oh yeah that one's essential." done and dusted. (okay after i wrote this i did hear moira say "my callipygean ass" in an episode of schitt's creek i was rewatching, but i think that still proves my point, because moira.)

une cambuse: can't believe there's an entire word for "hovel" that victor hugo never used in les mis. monsieur come collect your word (that also means "ship's galley")!

un camembert: obviously there is a cheese called this but DID YOU KNOW it's also the word for pie chart?? that's so french omg.

faire la carpette: bend over backwards to please someone; lie on the floor. i love the double meaning: figuratively being a doormat or literally just being flat on the ground. oh carpet we're really in it now…

faire la carpe pâmée: feign unconsciousness. quick, they're looking this way! do the fainted carp!

so many great casse- compounds, including three that all mean snack (un casse-croûte (lit. break-crust), un casse-dalle, un casse-graine (lit. break-food)). there's a whole bunch of casse-[body part] compounds: un(e) casse-couilles (lit. break-balls) and un(e) casse-pieds (lit. break-feet) both mean pain in the ass, while un(e) casse-cou (break-neck) is a daredevil and un casse-tête (lit. break-head) is a brainteaser, a conundrum, or a club/mace. the adjective casse-gueule (lit. break-face) means risky, dangerous, tricky. i also checked my separate french slang dictionary (you can't expect me to have just ONE french dictionary, come on) because i thought it was weird that there was no casse-cul even though the word cul is like the number one word to put in french idioms, and guess what. un(e) casse-cul is ALSO a pain in the ass. i am feeling so smug about this extremely obvious deduction. eat yer heart out, hercule poirot!

ça passe ou ça casse: it's make or break. love me a pithy rhyming cliche! i hope they say this on french reality shows…i can totally imagine it in a dramatic announcer voiceover.

je me casse: i'm outta here. yes!! another one for the casual farewell arsenal!!!

être assis(e)/avoir le cul entre deux chaises: have a foot in each camp, be sitting on the fence, be caught in the middle. literally: be sitting ass between two chairs. just such a good image.

appuyer sur le champignon: step on the gas. why is the gas pedal a mushroom? heck if i know, but i am on board with it and ready to be charmed.

tenir la chandelle: be the third wheel. listen, it was probably really complicated to have sex back in the days of 1) complicated dress and 2) no electricity. maybe you need someone to illuminate all the tricky fastenings you're trying to undo…that's where the candle guy comes in.

passe ton chemin !: on your way/off with you! i am collecting soooo many ways to tell people to leave. if i could just go back twenty years to that one time i was in a phone booth in the south of france with a friend who was being harassed by an adult french man…i sure would be able to yell something at him in the right language this time. rick steves taught me how to propose to someone in marriage but not how to rebuff a creep. come on, rick! priorities!

être comme cul et chemise: be thick as thieves, be bosom buddies. literally, be like ass and shirt, which maybe didn't age super well, because these days most shirts don't even cover the ass 🙄 interestingly, i looked up "be in cahoots with [sb]" on wordreference to see if that was also a possible translation of this expression, and it turned up être en chemise avec [qqn]. which is maybe just a slightly less vulgar way of saying comme cul et chemise? i don't have a great sense for how rude of a word "cul" is considered to be, since as i mentioned previously it appears in approximately five hundred thousand french expressions.

just to throw another thing in the mix, être en cheville avec [qqn] ALSO means to be in cahoots with [sb]. maybe être en chemise avec is what happens when être comme cul et chemise and être en cheville avec have a baby?? (before reading this dictionary i only knew about the "ankle" sense of cheville, but apparently it's also like a dowel that you use when building stuff? so that's probably the sense that's being invoked in this expression.)

chiche (incidentally, pronounced just like "sheesh") is an interjection meaning "i dare you!" (it's also an adjective meaning stingy.) this section of the dictionary also has cap ou pas cap ? (cap: short for capable), which appears to mean the same thing. kids gotta have ways to taunt each other into doing dumb shit. it's a universal law, probably.

bête comme chou: dead simple, easy as pie, easy-peasy. literally, stupid as cabbage. it's so easy a cabbage could do/understand it, and cabbages aren't exactly known for their feats of intelligence or skill. remembering this one should be bête comme chou. (i wish i could leave it there but i did actually look up the etymology of bête comme chou and it seems to be more that chou was slang for ass, so calling someone bête comme chou was like calling them a dumbass, and then at some point the meaning shifted to refer to things a dumbass can't do or understand rather than the dumbass themselves. but "so easy a cabbage could do it" is easier to remember, so.)

faire chou blanc: come up short, come up empty-handed. i was reading this thinking, man, the french sure don't think much of the capabilities of cabbages, but i looked up the etymology of faire chou blanc and this actually comes from the berry dialect, where coup is pronounced chou. un c[h]oup blanc was a phrase used in the game of quilles (skittles, related to bowling) for when you fail to hit any pins whatsoever. so faire chou blanc is basically to throw a gutter ball!

ferme ton clapet !: shut your trap! jotting this down for my trip in time back to that one phone booth harasser guy 👀📝 he will rue the day i built a time machine and also the day i decided to read the entire french dictionary.

prendre ses cliques et ses claques: pack up and leave, take one's things and go. listen, i'm a simple guy. you put two words that sound almost the same right next to each other and i eat that shit right up. also, as established i have this weird obsession with learning as many ways as possible to talk about removing myself from situations. so welcome to the fold, my child. you may have clique-claqued your way out of wherever you were before, but you are home now. allow me to introduce you to all your new siblings.

des clous !: no way!, no chance! clous are nails. don't look at me, i don't get it either. i just think it's catchy.

le petit coin: bathroom. literally "the little corner". as far as euphemisms go, i much prefer this to "the little boys'/girls' room".

c'est le comble/c'est un comble: that takes the cake, well now i've heard it all, you couldn't make this up. le comble is the pinnacle of something, the most [thing] that [thing] can be. so it's like whew, there's no beating that! also it comes from the latin word cumulus btw.

comme tout: as anything, as can be. in other words, af.

en compote: aching, sore. as though your muscles have been pureed into jam i guess?

une contrepèterie: a spoonerism! this is when two sounds in a phrase are switched, changing the meaning of the phrase in a comical way ("the lord is a shoving leopard" for "the lord is a loving shepherd", for example). the french example given in the wikipedia article for spoonerisms is "femme folle à la messe et femme molle à la fesse" ("insane woman at mass, woman with flabby buttocks") from a novel by rabelais. (which is kind of giving me freak in the sheets lady in the streets vibes now that i think about it.)

convivial(e): convivial, friendly, congenial, of course, but also easy to use, user-friendly! i find this so charming. i am truly so easy to please.

sauter/passer du coq-à-l'âne: go off on a tangent, be all over the place. literally, jump from the rooster to the donkey. makes sense to me. you thought we were talking about the rooster? well, now we're talking about the donkey. try to keep up.

les coquelicots: period, menstruation, time of the month. un coquelicot is a poppy, but les coquelicots? watch out. i haven't confirmed this, but i'm choosing to believe it's because of the color. also, i love poppies, and i love the word coquelicot. if getting my stupid period gives me the opportunity to say this fun word, i'll take it.

corser [qqch]: spice [sth] up (figurative or literal); complicate [sth]; flavor [sth]. my first thought was "is corsican cuisine known for being spicy??" but the etymology of corser is actually from the word corps, meaning body. so, you're giving body to something. neat! there's also se corser (get complicated, thicken), as in la situation se corse (the plot thickens). oh yeah. now we're cookin'.

en tenir une couche: be a dumbass, not be playing with a full deck. une couche is a layer, so i'm thinking this is like not having much going on under the hood. what you see is what you get. there's nothing under the surface. nobody at home.

ma couille: dude, mate. i definitely need ways to say dude in french. couille means testicle btw, because of course it does. this is french we're talking about.

un coupe-coupe: machete. literally, a cut-cut. if only more french words were formed using this logic!! i could get used to this.

le crachin: drizzle. which also allows you to say the truly incredible phrase il y a du crachin (it's drizzling). (cracher is to spit.)

ça craint: that sucks; life sucks. craindre [qqch] is to be afraid of [sth], so i don't totally get the connection, but i say "that sucks" all the time, so it's nice to have a way to say it in french. actually, it would be better if things could just suck less. but that does seem more difficult than just learning some words.

avoir un (petit) creux: feel peckish. un creux is a hollow so this is giving me vibes like please sir 🥺 my tummy is a lil empty 🥺👉👈

le cuir: leather, but also apparently the word for making a liaison (aka pronouncing the letter on the end of a word because the following word starts with a vowel) when you're not supposed to. no idea what that has to do with leather, but i do find myself kind of charmed against my will to know that there's a specific word for this mistake i make all the time. i guess that means i'm not alone. OR they made up the word just for me 🥰 either way, a win imho.

avoir du cul: be damn lucky. okay the rest of these are cul idioms. i told you there were a lot, so i have just picked my very favorites.

avoir la tête dans le cul if translated literally would be more or less "have one's head up one's ass", mais attention because apparently in french it means be half-asleep, be dozy, feel like shit. so if someone says j'ai la tête dans le cul, they are probably not inviting you to join them in roasting them for being a dumbass. word to the wise.

en avoir plein/ras le cul (de [qqch]): be sick and tired (of [sth]), be fed up (with [sth]), have had it up to here (with [sth]). french truly is a beautiful language.

saving the best for last (but also, it just came last in the alphabet): et mon cul, c'est du poulet ?: yeah, right!, my ass! literally "and my ass, it's [made of] chicken?" i assume i don't have to explain why this brings me such joy.

next up…51 pages of Ds! (which i actually finished reading long ago and am now in the E's but shhhhh)

#and my ass‚ it is made of chicken?#yeah okay i'll incorporate that into my lexicon.#french #lecture du dico #my posts #links #cuts #linked to #cul idiom count: only 7! you have no idea what a feat of curation this was. there are soooo many cul idioms u guys...#ps i actually only have one french dictionary if you don't count french-english dictionaries #if you do count them i have four french dictionaries #because obviously i just have a regular old french-english english-french dictionary #then i have one of those but specifically for slang. it is however from 20 years ago so it's unclear how dated it is #then i have a 'dictionary' of french idioms that translates them into english. i guess that's not exactly a dictionary though #i also have at least one little guidebook #but honestly mostly i use online dictionaries lol #i've been thinking lately i might go down from 3 pages a day to 2 pages a day #what's the rush? plus i am now going through sections faster than i can write about them #so we'll see. that would still have me finishing less than a year after i started #and then who knows? there's always the slang dictionary...#😎

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