Taylor tells Gene to 'get out more'

Corey Taylor has urged Gene Simmons to "get out more" while once again hailing the current rock scene as alive and very much kicking.

The Slipknot frontman says he’s thrilled with the success of his band’s latest album .5: The Gray Chapter, but insists he doesn’t always believe success relates directly to sales.

Taylor points to the success of the recent Knotfest festival as a true indicator of the thriving rock and metal scene.

He was responding to Kiss star Gene Simmons’ controversial comment that “rock is dead,” which sparked a string of musicians to defend the genre.

Taylor tells KLAQ: “I think people put too much on sales, because that doesn’t relate to how many people hear it. In this day and age it’s more about getting people to hear the music.

“I love the fact that we had the highest sales in the first week for a metal band the whole year, in a long time. I’m proud of that. But at the same time that doesn’t relate to how many people have heard it and bought specific songs.

“We had three million views for the Knotfest live streams and you don’t get awards for that. We had so many million views of The Negative One video and The Devil In I video, and you don’t get awards for that.

“Just the fact that we had almost 70,000 people over the Knotfest weekend proves something. You don’t always need a platinum album to relate that to success so, with all due respect to Mr Simmons, he needs to get out more.”

.5: The Gray Chapter topped the charts in the US and Canada and landed at no.2 in the UK.

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.