Last Monday (May 22nd), Slipknot/Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor confronted the traumas of his past, including abandonment, attempted suicide, and childhood rape on Viceland’s The Therapist. In the clip below, Taylor talks about the significance of wearing a literal mask.

When therapist Dr. Siri Sat Nam Singh asks Taylor if he’d ever perform without the mask in Slipknot, he replies: "With Slipknot - at least for most of us in the band - the mask is part of the art. It's not just the visual and the shock, it's a representation of who I am in that album. So, for me, it's as natural as having a different hairs tyle for one album and tour cycle, wearing different clothes for an album and tour cycle. It's a part of the dynamic. It's one of the things that you look forward to. Not just writing the songs, not just putting the music together, not just putting the visuals together, but what… who am I in this album?

“On the last album, the one that dealt with (late bassist) Paul (Gray)’s death, the mask that I had was two layers, so I could pull one off and there was another mask there. And it was the mask behind the mask, you know, being open to a point, but never really sharing that pain. Even when push comes to shove, pulling that layer away, and it's still… there's still something behind it that I'm not willing to share.

“And that album, The Gray Chapter, was basically my way of processing everything and hopefully helping the band process it and putting it into perspectives that we can understand. It was me trying to give my friends a voice and letting them know that I was with them and that things weren't gonna be okay, but we were gonna move on."

Da Capo Press has set August 15th as the release date for Corey Taylor’s new book, America 51: A Probe Into The Realities That Are Hiding Inside The Greatest Country In The World. He recently guested on 94.3 KILO and offered an inside look of what people can expect of his latest written work. Check out the interview below.

An official book description states: The always-outspoken hard rock vocalist Corey Taylor begins America 51 with a reflection on what his itinerant youth and frequent worldwide travels with his multiplatinum bands Slipknot and Stone Sour have taught him about what it means to be an American in an increasingly unstable world. He examines the way America sees itself, specifically with regard to the propaganda surrounding America's origins (like a heavy-metal Howard Zinn), while also celebrating the quirks and behavior that make a true-blue American.

Balancing humor, outrage, and disbelief, Taylor examines the rotting core of America, evaluating everything from politics and race relations to family and "man buns." By continuing the wave of moral outrage begun in You're Making Me Hate You, Taylor skewers contemporary America in his own signature style.