Corey Taylor’s son Griffin remembers the first time he saw his dad in his Slipknot mask: “Who the **** is this guy?!”

Corey Taylor’s son Griffin has looked back on the first time he saw his dad in his Slipknot mask.

Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, the junior Taylor – who now fronts his own nu metal band, Vended – says that he was very young the first time he saw Corey in his iconic mask, remembering that he looked like “part goldfish, part potato”.

He admits it took him a moment to realise that the person he was looking at was in fact his own dad.

“I actually don’t really remember it, but, so I’m told, I was a baby, or a toddler, and my babysitter took me over while they were getting ready to go onstage,” says Griffin.

He adds: “I got handed to him – this was when it was the face stitch mask era [referring to how Corey looked around the time of Slipknot’s 2004 album, Vol 3: The Subliminal Verses] – and I was obviously taken aback, very curious, like, ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ Then he started talking, like, ‘Hey buddy,’ and I just started feeling his mask and was fine.”

Griffin, Corey’s second child, was born in 2002 to the Slipknot singer and his then-fiancée, Scarlett. He founded Vended in 2018, starting the band with a fellow son of a Slipknot member: Simon Crahan, whose dad is ’Knot percussionist and co-founder Shawn “Clown” Crahan. Vended have supported Slipknot on multiple occasions and they self-released their self-titled debut album in 2024.

In 2023, Corey spoke to Hammer about his thoughts on his son starting a band of his own.

“The dad in me is constantly worried about him,” he said. “He’s gonna be 21 this year, and I’m still, like, ‘Oh god…’ At the same time, I have to let him do his own thing, and I love what he’s doing – nobody is more proud than I am. Have I tried to give him advice? Sure, but he’s got that Taylor gene where you don’t learn anything unless you’ve had the shit kicked out of you.”

Vended will hit the European festival circuit in 2026, with performances at the likes of Bloodstock Open Air in the UK, Wacken in Germany and Rockstadt in Romania booked. Meanwhile, Slipknot are currently enjoying downtime from the road, but drummer Eloy Casagrande said in October that work on new music is well underway.