Jay Weinberg says that being in SLIPKNOT has been "the most enjoyable" experience of his life. The now-28-year-old drummer discovered SLIPKNOT when he was a pre-teen, through his father Max, of Bruce Springsteen's E STREET BAND, and leader of the house band on Conan O'Brien's talk show. He was hooked immediately and was a huge fan of SLIPKNOT by the time he was invited to Los Angeles to try out as replacement for Joey Jordison in 2013. In a recent interview with SJC Custom Drums, Weinberg stated about his audition (see video below): "After spending a lot of time on the road with different bands, I stopped touring entirely and went back to school," Jay recalled. "My manager, who managed this band I used to be in, calls me and says, 'What are you doing? I have something. I think you'd wanna do it. Can you just trust me and get out here to L.A.?' Without hesitation, I was just, like, 'Yeah! Okay. I can do that.' I didn't know what it was for, but I knew if someone was asking me to come and play drums on something, I wanna kick the shit out of it." He continued: "I go out there, just go to their studio, and they're, like, 'All right. There's a drum set. We'll bring in SLIPKNOT in, like, 20 minutes. Is that cool?' I'm, like, 'Yeah. Okay. That's cool.' "Just from going on muscle memory from when I was, like, 14 or 15 in my shed, we played about 20 SLIPKNOT songs. And it was, like, 'All right, man. If you want this, it's yours.'" According to Weinberg, playing with SLIPKNOT has been the highlight of his musical career. "I'm a kid with a dream, and I feel so fortunate and so honored to have been able to hop over the barrier onto the stage and have this opportunity to create and bring some sort of contribution to this band I loved so much," he said. "It's the most enjoyable, self-destructive, euphoric experience, and it takes a lot of blood, it takes a lot of pain, but it's all worth it, because SLIPKNOT is the greatest band — period." For the first few months after the release of 2014's ".5: The Gray Chapter", the members of SLIPKNOT had declined to name the musicians who were playing drums and bass on their tour, despite the fact that their identities were revealed as Weinberg and bassist Alessandro "Vman" Venturella by a disgruntled former drumtech for SLIPKNOT who posted a picture of a backstage call sheet on Instagram. SLIPKNOT announced its split with Jordison in December 2013 but did not disclose the reasons for his exit. The drummer subsequently issued a statement saying that he did not quit the group. SLIPKNOT's sixth album, "We Are Not Your Kind", will be released on August 9 via Roadrunner.
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