With his identity now officially confirmed, SLIPKNOT bassist Alessandro "Vman" Venturella gave U.K.'s Total Guitar magazine a world-first tour of his Status S2 Graphite headless bass. Check out the clip below. SLIPKNOT guitarists Jim Root and Mick Thomson reportedly handled most of the bass duties on the band's latest album, ".5: The Gray Chapter", with some help from Venturella and former touring bassist Donnie Steele. SLIPKNOT singer Corey Taylor spoke to the "Talk Is Jericho" podcast about how SLIPKNOT eventually decided to hire Venturella to finish out the record and join the band on the road. He said: "[The way] Vman [came into SLIPKNOT] was a little different [from the way drummer Jay Weinberg did], because we had a couple of people that we were looking at and that we had actually worked with, and it just wasn't vibing. Nothing against them technically it just wasn't vibing. And I think Jim was actually the one who said, 'For now, let's bring Vman in. He can handle it.' 'Cause the dude is a ripper. A lot of people don't know that. We met him through MASTODON, so we've known him a long time, and Jim knew just how good he was. So he came in, and he just started handling it. And he's so easy to hang out with. He's such a great dude. And it just got better and better and better and better and better. And the question got brought up towards the end of the album. It was, like, 'What are we gonna do live?' And we were, like, 'What do you mean? He's coming with us.' It was a slower burn for him, because we had tried a couple of other people. But it worked so well that it was just, like, 'Okay, this is it.' And then it was trial by fire, 'cause now you're jumping out of the airplane. The first gig was Knotfest in front of 25,000 people. That was their first gig. But it came off, man, and it's just gotten better. It never gets easier, but it's gotten better." SLIPKNOT's original bassist Paul Gray passed away in May 2010 from an accidental overdose of drugs.
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