Slipknot, etc. frontman Corey Taylor has voiced his disappointment in how his past longtime label home of Roadrunner Records handled the release of his 2020 solo album “CMFT“. Slipknot themselves had called Roadrunner home since the late 90s, though they ultimately parted ways with the label last year.
Due to acquisitions and various staff turnover, the Roadrunner Records which Slipknot signed to had of course drastically changed over the years. During an recent appearance on the ‘All Things Music‘ podcast, Taylor—who recently partnered with BMG to form his own label imprint Decibel Cooper—commented of that:
“…The rad thing about BMG is just how into everything I am and everything I do they are. Which is refreshing, because probably for about 10 years Roadrunner has not been that. Roadrunner was completely antithetical when it came to that stuff. They just had become this company that we didn’t even recognize anymore. So when our contract came up, we were, like, ‘1-800 See ya! I’m done with you.’ Because it had turned into a bunch of people we didn’t know.”
He continued:
“They did this massive cull back in, like, I wanna say it was 2012. It was the ‘great firing.’ And they fired everyone we knew, everyone we had started out with… Jonas [Nachsin], the president, gone. By this time, Cees [Wessels], the old owner, was gone. So Roadrunner went from this juggernaut of a metal company to a hallway at Warner Bros.. I saw it with my own eyes. I was just, like, ‘Wow! Where did this go?’
It just became this thing that they owned the catalog. And that was it. They didn’t care. And the people who were left didn’t really care about us. So it really became this thing where we had to kind of rise to the challenge on that. And all kudos to our management company, 5B, because they really created all of these different departments around us to help us keep going. If it wasn’t for 5B, man, we would have been stalled; let’s put it that way. So we were able to continue going, really kind of almost in a weird, corporate DIY way.
So when the time came to do my solo thing, Roadrunner almost halfheartedly put the first album out. Didn’t push it. It’s insane that we even did what we could with that, even with the pandemic going on, because they didn’t care. So when the time came to kind of re-up with Roadrunner, they were, like, ‘If you wanna go somewhere else, we won’t stop you.’ I was, like, ‘That’s all I needed to hear, dude.’ I was, like, ‘Thanks for that.'”
At the moment Decibel Cooper only extends to Taylor‘s solo works and potential releases from other artists he may sign to it. His forthcoming sophomore solo album “CMF2” is expected to be the first offering through it.
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