SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor says that he “doesn’t have time” for the Grammy Awards, explaining that the annual show is nothing but “a popularity contest” among aging music industry insiders, many of whom have had a long history of ignoring hard rock and heavy metal.

Although SLIPKNOT has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards, it has won only one — picking up the “Best Metal Performance” gong in 2006 with the single “Before I Forget”. The group is once again nominated this year, this time for its track “Custer”, which is taken from the album “.5: The Gray Chapter”, SLIPKNOT‘s first full-length release in six years.

Asked by Finland’s Radio Rock how much winning a Grammy means to him, Taylor said: “Shit. I’m totally honest. I know a lot of people who, they put a lot of stock in it, but I keep telling ’em… I mean, we’ve been nominated now, like… God knows how many times. It’s been over ten times. We won once… Cool. It’s a popularity contest; that’s all it is. If it weren’t, if it were just about the music, you would see more metal bands — not including us — nominated in other categories, like ‘Album Of The Year’ [and] all of these different categories, and you just don’t. So it’s all a goddamn popularity contest, and I don’t have fucking time for that shit, to be honest.”

He continued: “It’s, like, everybody, they live and breathe by whether or not they’re gonna get this tiny statue, and it’s, like, why? So it can sit on a goddamned shelf and collect dust. To me, the real reflection of where you’re at is [performing live], and that’s all it is. Walking on that stage and seeing a massive audience lose their minds — that’s what it’s all about. You can take those statuettes all day long; I don’t care. It’s cool to win, but I’m not gonna fucking die if we don’t win a Grammy, you know.”

During a 2014 appearance on the Nerdist podcast, Taylor took issue with the with the Grammys and their voting process, saying: “Old people vote [on those awards]. I’m convinced that’s the reason we won, is because an old person went, ‘SLIPKNOT! I read a magazine article about them. They’ve been around. Here you go. Take it. The kids are gonna be real happy.’ ‘Cause you look at it, and you’re, like, fuckin’ JUDAS PRIEST won one for a live version of a song they released 40 years ago, and the live version was released 20 years before that. And they only re-released it because of a box set. And they gave it to them? I’m, like, ‘Fucking what?'”

He went on to say: “It doesn’t mean anything. I mean, that’s like trying to hit a fucking needle with another needle. You have one metal category, you have one basic rock category, and you’ve got bands like FUN winning it. And I’m, like, ‘Really? Show me on the doll where FUN is a rock band.'”

To date, Taylor‘s other band, STONE SOUR, has received three Grammy Award nominations for “Best Metal Performance” for the singles “Get Inside”, “Inhale” and “30/30-150”.

Fonte: Blabbermouth.net