Mick Thomson on Slipknot’s First Album: “My Solos Were Cut”
The guitarist opens up about the creative choices behind Slipknot’s first album.
- Mick Thomson revealed that his guitar solos recorded for Slipknot’s debut album were completely removed during production.
- Producer Ross Robinson and the late Joey Jordison deemed solos ‘stupid,’ reflecting the late ’90s anti-technical trend in metal.
- Thomson expressed frustration over the cuts, describing it as a loss after spending his life honing his skills for them to be dismissed.
Slipknot’s first album is a maelstrom of riffs, rage, and pure chaos, but here’s a tidbit you might’ve missed: not a single guitar solo survived the final cut. Mick Thomson, the band’s ax-slinging powerhouse, recently spilled the beans in an interview with Guitar World. Turns out, he did lay down some serious solos—only to watch them vanish faster than an encore at a club with a broken bar tab system. His explanation? Solos were deemed uncool by the powers that be.
“They all got cut,” Mick said flatly, pointing fingers at producer Ross Robinson and the late Joey Jordison. “Between Ross and Joey, solos were officially ‘stupid’ back then.”
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For context, the late ’90s metal scene wasn’t exactly rolling out the red carpet for flashy guitar work. Technical prowess was seen as outdated—a relic of hair-metal excess. Mick explained it with a tone as sharp as his guitar’s drop tuning: “Any kind of technical guitar playing was mocked and frowned upon.” Tracks like “(sic)”, originally titled “Slipknot,” had solos that were simply massaged out of existence. And no, he’s not over it.
“I get it, but it sucked,” he admitted. You could almost hear the years of frustration as he described pouring countless hours into honing his craft, only for his solos to end up on the cutting-room floor. “I’m sitting there like, ‘Cool, just take it all away. I’ve spent my whole life in my room, obsessing over this stuff, and now… nope! Gone!’”
The decision to nix the solos wasn’t entirely without logic—if you’re willing to squint. Mick acknowledged that by the late ’90s, solos had become a tired trope in metal. “We grew up in an era where every goddamn song had one or two guitar solos, like it was paint-by-numbers. ‘There’s the verse, here’s the chorus, now slap a solo in because… tradition?’” He credits Ross for challenging that formula, though it came at the cost of Mick’s hard-fought contributions.
Despite the logic, the whole thing still feels like a gut-punch for a guitarist who clearly poured his soul into every note. You can practically hear Mick thinking, “Great, I spent years perfecting these skills so they could just be labeled irrelevant?”
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In the end, Slipknot’s debut made history without a single flashy solo, proving that sometimes raw energy beats technical fireworks. But you’ve got to wonder—what could’ve been if those leads had been allowed to breathe? Guess we’ll just have to settle for the riffs and imagine the rest. Thanks, late ’90s metal trends.
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