AVATAR frontman Johannes Eckerström spoke to the "Talk Toomey" podcast about how Corey Taylor ended up having a guest appearance on the band's upcoming album, "Hunter Gatherer". The SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR singer can be heard whistling a part in the song "Secret Door", and he also shares vocals with Eckerström during the "gang-vocal sing-along melody in the end" of the same track, according to Johannes. "Basically, what happened is that we have popped up on his radar in different ways that led up to this," Eckerström said (hear audio below). "He has worked with the same producer multiple times now, Jay Ruston. And his wife is into us and I think has helped turn him on to us, and we have, of course, opened for SLIPKNOT. And, actually, a billion years ago, we also opened for STONE SOUR but in more recent days we opened for SLIPKNOT — last year, actually. So he was in touch with Jay, and it turns out [he was] going to be in town while we were recording and he [said he] would love to come by the studio and hear some things and also said, 'I'm all open for doing something, laying down some tracks on something, if the guys are into that.' [It was] very open-ended and a nice thing to offer. And the first thing that came to my mind was… In one of the early episodes of 'South Park', in those early seasons, when they would have really, really famous people but let them have really minuscule parts. Jay Leno was a cat, if I remember... And I think, if I remember, Jerry Seinfeld, or his agents or something, turned down being turkey number two — something along those lines. So that immediately [led me to start thinking]... Oh, yeah, let's get this man who became one of those voices of a generation, one of those that when we were teenagers getting turned on to heavy music, they were one of the contemporary band, 'cause we were all quite old school most of our life. we liked, but they opened my mind to a whole bunch of things. He's an icon of our generation, and he can whistle." Johannes whistled on the demo version of "Secret Door", but Corey is "a better whistler, so it actually helped," Eckerström said. "He goes into the booth, and, of course, then it's serious — he took it very seriously, as did we recording him. There was no giggles at that time. And there was more than one take to really nail it. 'Cause once you're in there, I guess even if you wanna record fart noises, you still want it to be the best fart noises. You can't help yourself in the studio to want to do a good job, whatever you're doing." AVATAR's eighth full-length album, "Hunter Gatherer", will be released on August 7 via Entertainment One (eOne). The disc was recorded last year at Sphere Studios in Los Angeles, California with producer Jay Ruston, who has previously worked with STONE SOUR, ANTHRAX and STEEL PANTHER, among many others.
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