If you’re a big Slipknot fan, 2025 might be the ideal time to see live. That’s according to the band’s own bassist Alessandro “Vman” Venturella.
Chatting with Rolling Stone AU/NZ ahead of Knotfest Australia, Vman said Slipknot are ticking along nicely this year.
“We’re hungry now to keep doing stuff,” he said. “There is so much talk of writing new music, even just jamming new music. It’s a breath of fresh air into the band.”
He continued: “You can drop an idea and say, ‘Why don’t you try this?’ He’ll play it and I’ll be like, ‘That’s amazing!’ It’ll set someone else off and it goes from there. For me, the future or what’s to come is more of a unit than it’s ever been.”
However, when pressed to reveal what exactly might be coming up for the band in the way of new music, Vman was tight-lipped. “It’s hard to tell! That’s the problem with this band, there’s so much secrecy around things…” he said furtively.
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Vman was a touring guitar tech before he became a full-time member of the nu-metal legends’ lineup, and he told Rolling Stone AU/NZ that he found the initial jump to playing in front of tens of thousands of fans daunting.
“I’ve always been a musician, so the first rehearsals I had with the band, it just felt natural,” he said. “The only weird thing was the realisation of, ‘Okay, I’m playing with Slipknot.’ That was the only thing.
“I’d known Jim [Root] for a long time. I’d been on tour with Slipknot in 2008 for All Hope Is Gone, so I’d known a few of them. It wasn’t too weird, but when it came to actually being on a stage and playing in front of 50,000 people for Knotfest in San Bernardino it was like, ‘Whoa, what is this?’ You’ve got something on your face, you’re in a boilersuit and it’s boiling hot… those types of things were definitely strange.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Vman explained how returning to Australia for Knotfest feels like a “family reunion” for him and the band.
“Australia is a surreal one,” he said. “I did eight Soundwaves in a row, as a tech in the band. The last one I did, I headlined it with Slipknot. It’s quite surreal! Coming back here, we’re seeing all the friends, all the crew, all the people who work these festivals… It’s a big reunion every time we come back here.
“With the sideshows as well, it just feels like we’re on holiday. We’ll go off and do our own thing for the day, then meet back up at the sideshow.”
More information about Knotfest Australia, and Slipknot’s sideshows, is available here.
