Anders Colsefni sang on "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.", left SLIPKNOT in September 1997, and watched from Des Moines as the band he started became one of the biggest in metal. In a new interview with The Phase Remains The Same, he was asked how that sits with him thirty years later, and the answer was not bitter.
"I'm a death metal singer by heart, and they had the opportunity to go on and do what they're doing now because they were able to do some radio songs that nothing I would do was gonna get on a radio," he said. "I already knew that... While it ended up crushing my spirit for a little while, I was able to realise that I'm just one of a long line of original singers that weren't the ones that actually made the band famous. You can start with KORN, for one of them. And it took a little while, but I was fine with it. And I'm certainly fine with it now. I don't have any regrets."
The record itself was written in his basement. "Basement of a duplex right in the middle of Des Moines, with my upstairs neighbour constantly pissed off 'cause of the noise... with carpet hanging all over the place, try to dampen the sound. It was gross." He rejects the idea that it was only a demo — it took over a year and was properly recorded, engineered, produced and mixed — while cheerfully allowing that he does not much care what anyone calls it. As for how many exist: 1,000 in the first pressing, and possibly another 1,000 through -ismist Records, though he was only told about that one after the fact.
What he does want to change is the 2024 version recorded with New Zealand outfit KAOSIS, which he has publicly asked fans not to stream. He was sent a framework online and sang over it believing the original musicians would play their parts; instead it was all done digitally. "That was a communication breakdown of a major, major deal there," he said, calling the result a poor representation of the songs.
He would rather re-record the album with the musicians backing him now — but Corey Taylor and Shawn Crahan sold their catalogue to a different company, and he is still working out who to ask and whether he can. "I would love to put out something with my guys recorded for real and not just everything computerised, and do it the way it should be done."
He also cleared up the "Crowz" sessions: those songs — "Me Inside", "Prosthetics", "Scissors" — were his first, and Corey Taylor was brought in to re-cut vocals over them while Colsefni was away visiting family in Minnesota.
Meanwhile PAINFACE, the band he formed in 1998, is running again. Two singles arrived in 2025, another dozen are in progress, and he plans to release them in pairs until there is an album's worth. In June he played the 30th anniversary of "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." at Wooly's in Des Moines, backed by a band of old-school Midwest musicians he calls THE CROWZ.