Slipknot's 2004 album Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) credits Rick Rubin as its producer and Greg Fidelman as the engineer responsible for mixing, but Corey Taylor doesn't quite see it that way. In a new interview with Revolver, Taylor said he still has a hard time listening to Vol. 3 partially because of how absent Rubin allegedly was during the recording process.
"Oh God, that was such a pivotal time in my life," Taylor said. "I was in such a bad place, I don't really have a lot of memory of the first half of making that album, because I was so fucked up all the time. The thing that sticks out is that there was such a sense of trepidation before the album even came out. We weren't sure if anybody was even gonna dig it, you know? It wasn't until people got a load of 'Duality' that everything changed.
"We weren't sure if people were gonna be ready for an album like that; we weren't sure if we were ready for an album like that. And the recording of it left such a bad taste in my mouth that to this day I have a hard time listening to it. Obviously, a lot of it stems from how I feel about [producer] Rick Rubin; to me, Greg Fidelman produced that album, because Rubin wasn't there. He just fucking wasn't. And when he was, it's like he couldn't be bothered."
This is hardly the first time Taylor has been critical of Rubin's work on Vol. 3 sessions. Taylor's negative opinion of Rubin goes all the way back to 2008, when he said in an interview "I wouldn't know what it's like to work with Rick Rubin. I only saw him about four times. Rick Rubin is a nice man. He's done a lot of good for a lot of people. He didn't do anything for me. I'm not happy with the vocals on that record.
"There were a lot of takes that I thought were much better than the ones they fuckin' used and I wasn't asked about a lot of shit. It sounds amazing; the songs are great. But we were being charged horrendous amounts of money. And for me, if you're going to produce something, you're fucking there. I don't care who you are."
