Slipknot Vman given medical 'A-Okay'

Slipknot bassist Alessandro ‘Vman’ Venturella has been given the “A-Okay” by doctors after being rushed to hospital earlier this month.

The band had to play a show without him after he was diagnosed with severe dehydration and told to rest. Frontman Corey Taylor says Venturella is on the road to full fitness and that he’s getting plenty of rest as the band ploughs on with their US tour.

Taylor tells Musik Universe: “Vman is great. Toronto was his first show back on stage – he had been playing back behind the set cards, just resting as much as possible, getting his legs back together. He went and saw the doctor again for a check-up. He gave him the A-Okay and he’s doing good. We’re just watching him and seeing how he’s doing. And he’s doing great.”

The singer also speaks about his future plans for the band’s Knotfest event, saying he doesn’t want it to turn into a Mayhem or Vans Warped style event that rolls into a different city every day. The Mayhem tour will not go ahead next year, organisers said recently.

Taylor adds: “I think if we turned Knotfest into a big tour, then we’d lose a lot of the elements that make it so cool. It wouldn’t be a two to three days any more. It would be a one-day thing, and we wouldn’t be able to bring out a lot of the elements that we like, like the carnivals and the museum. So it’s definitely a conversation that’s going on right now.

“My idea was to do maybe 10 weekends in different places – maybe five in the US, a couple in Canada, and maybe one in Mexico City. Just try to expand it so people get the actual experience of it.”

Slipknot’s ongoing tour stops in Noblesville, Indiana, tomorrow (Saturday).

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.