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Des Moines at the turn of the century was home to one of the biggest heavy metal bands on the planet.
Slipknot was performing in front of hundreds of thousands of fans at festivals around the world, and also inspiring the creation of metal acts hoping to follow in its footsteps back home. The band's self-titled 1999 debut went double platinum, and each of three successive releases went platinum. Seven Grammy nominations, including a win for Best Metal Performance in 2006, followed.
Slipknot also gave the Iowa music scene a face (nine of them, masked), linking the state - and the band's hometown - to a sound that has endured here for more than a decade.
There was a time when it seemed possible for Des Moines to become for metal what Seattle was for grunge. A decade later, no band has achieved mainstream success outside of Iowa, but the scene remains vibrant, as local and touring heavy metal acts fill concert venue calendars each week.
"We all wanted Slipknot to make it so bad," said Matt Nyberg, the frontman for metal band Facecage, who describes a heavy metal fanbase united behind its heroes. "We would go to shows in costume and we were just as much a part of the show as they were. They made it seem like an Iowa band can succeed."
Members of Slipknot dubbed Nyberg, 34, the "first maggot" (a term the band affectionately calls its fans). Slipknot inspired Nyberg to start his own metal band, and Facecage formed after Slipknot co-headlined the Tattoo the Earth Festival in 2000, which made a stop at Water Works Park.
Nyberg's band experienced brief moments of success, releasing its third album on Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor's Great Big Mouth Records in 2006, performing at the Download Festival in England in 2009 (estimated attendance was 120,000) and earning a two-page spread in Revolver magazine in 2007. The band, dormant for the last year or so, is working on its fourth album, hoping to once again blaze its own path to success.
"I doubt anyone from Des Moines will ever be as big as Slipknot, but they definitely inspired a lot of musicians in town to even try," he said.
Perfect timing for Slipknot
Des Moines' interest in heavy metal predates Slipknot. In fact, touring acts stopping in central Iowa is what brought the eventual members of the band together in the mid '90s. Slipknot percussionist Shawn Crahan remembers going to now-closed clubs The Runway on the south side and The Crowbar and Z International in the East Village to watch St. Louis, Chicago and Minneapolis heavy metal bands during the week. Then The Runway started booking local bands for all-ages shows on Sundays.
"That's when bands started meeting each other and exchanging numbers," Crahan said. "An underground scene started happening and you would get a sense of originality. Then they started bringing in bands like Corrosion of Conformity and King's X and opening the place up to that type of music on other nights. It seemed like we were all on the same wavelength - striving for the same thing."
Slipknot formed, built a following, and found itself in the unique position to sign its deal with Roadrunner Records at the tail end of the "old" record industry model.
Just a few short years later, Internet distribution (both legal and illegal) changed the look, and more importantly, the payout of record deals. When Slipknot signed its seven-album deal in 1998, the payout wasn't enormous (especially split nine ways) but it came with artistic freedom newer acts no longer enjoy. The band kept its publishing and merchandising rights, which means when a fan buys a shirt or you hear a song in a movie, Slipknot, not the label, gets the check.
Most bands now sign "360" deals, giving the label a bigger cut of merchandising, publishing and touring, to compensate for the fact that the label's traditional cash cow - the album - has diminished in importance.
"Five years ago, if you'd asked if I like being on a label, I'd tell you I absolutely want to get off as soon as possible," Crahan said. "But in reality we were one of the last generation of bands to have a standard deal. We're lucky to have that security."
Last May, Slipknot lost bassist and founding member Paul Gray to an accidental drug overdose. The band will play its first show without Gray June 24 at the Sonisphere Festival in Switzerland. Both Corey Taylor and Joey Jordison have said that Gray will not be replaced by a new masked member. Instead, the bass will be played offstage. The band has announced other summer dates in Europe and South America, but no North America shows so far.
Today, a changed scene
Metal still looms heavy over the Des Moines music scene, but bands are removed from the musical style and theatricality of Slipknot. Fact is, for every Slipknot and Korn that made a lasting impression, there are dozens of Crazy Towns, Apartment 26s and Fury of Fives that faded into relative obscurity. Where once most metal in Des Moines shared the heavy Slipknot sound, today's scene is more fractured and diverse, featuring many genres within the genre.
Local metal act Destrophy has seen its star rise in recent years. The group signed with Chicago-based Victory Records in 2009, home to acts like A Day to Remember and Four Letter Lie. Destrophy's song "The Way of Your World" has been featured heavily on Sirius XM. This year, the band's song "Reconnect" will be used in the video game "Supremacy MMA" and the Paul Giamatti film "Win Win."
Destrophy has toured with Otep, Type O Negative and on its own. Frontman Ari Mihalopoulos said booking agents have started to lump different genres of metal together at shows, meaning a more radio-friendly band like Destrophy could be paired with harder metal acts, even those approaching death metal intensity.
Mindrite is a band trying to provide the local scene with some diversity all by itself. The five-man act also performs as the death metal band Boston Hellmask, acoustic covers and hip hop as High While Driving, as well as occasional acoustic sets of Mindrite material. The band has so many outlets because they want to play more, but playing too many Mindrite shows would dilute the band's draw. Singer Spencer Fenimore, 28, also sees the wider net as insurance against changing audience tastes.
"I don't know that locally our scene is building, it seems like we're seeing more country and dance on the charts," Fenimore said. "That's the trend taking place nationwide, and everyone knows Des Moines takes a minute to catch up."
Another difference between now and then: The absence of mosh pits. At the Music as a Weapon Tour stop last month at Wells Fargo Arena, featuring Korn and Disturbed, the bands regularly called out for mosh pits to start. Once a staple of hard rock shows, mosh pits have become something of a rarity at Des Moines concerts. At the Snowball concert with Destrophy last month at People's Court, the crowd of hundreds mostly stood still, with some fans jumping up and down or pumping their fists in the air. Nyberg said mosh pits - like those famous pits from early Slipknot shows - have all but dried up over the last few years.
Knowledgeable, fickle fans
Sam Summers, owner of First Fleet Promotions, used to lose money on every metal show he booked. Now, as a younger fanbase has grown more interested in metal, about a third of the shows he books are metal concerts at venues like Vaudeville Mews and People's Court. Fans are loyal, but fickle.
"The kids can't wait for what's next. They'll jump onto a new band and once they'll get big, they try to find a smaller band to like," he said. "'Sellout' is a term that hardcore metal kids throw around the way punk fans used to. Once a band is selling out the Val Air I hear them saying 'I'm only going for the support bands.' "
Black Market Fetus and Catheter frontman Nate Phillips, 28, breaks down metal into two categories: "True metal," with bands like Cradle of Filth, Creator and Sodom, and "crap," which includes most popular metal acts. He used to book shows at his own DIY venue, The Fallout Shelter, and has brought Pentagram, Toxic Holocaust and MDC to the Vaudeville Mews. (He has also toured Europe with his own bands.) The metal bands he enjoys sing about heavy issues like war, politics and famine. He sees a strong connection between punk and metal, except metal bands "know how to play their instruments."
"People don't just come out to shows like they used to," Phillips said. "Just because it's a metal show doesn't mean it's a metal show to me. It could be some lame 'chuggah chuggah' crap, guys jumping around like they're on pogo sticks or a bunch of jocks. I don't want to see people that picked on me in high school doing what I've always done."
Whatever form it comes in, metal still has a powerful draw in the area, best illustrated by the sold-out crowd of 25,000 at last year's Lazerfest. But Chris Cardani, who helped book the festival, said the variety in the lineup - which included classic acts like Alice Cooper and even Christian metal act Red - expanded Lazerfest's appeal beyond mere metal fans.
Cardani remembers the first live show that showed him the potential for metal to succeed in Des Moines: Slipknot, of course, at Super Toad, where he booked concerts.
Doors were supposed to open at noon for the 2 p.m. all-ages show, but by 10 a.m. a line of 1,500 kids wrapped around the building. A nearby bank called to complain that fans were blocking its drive-through lane.
"I was staggered that that many kids wanted to see a show that bad," Cardani said. "It definitely opened my mind that this type of music has a future here."
More than a decade later, it still does.
