Watch Slipknot Discuss Meaning Behind Wearing Masks

Slipknot‘s frontman Corey Taylor and percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan will appear on BBC2’s program Artsnight Friday where the metal musicians will discuss why the band wears masks and what the appeal is for artists.

The program interviewed fans of the band about what they love about Slipknot’s masks, with one fan comparing it to “religion.” With their own masks off, the singer and drummer answered questions about what the headwear means to them.

“I had gotten a version of this mask when I was 14,” Crahan begins while holding his legendary scary clown mask. “I just never knew why it was in my world but it was always around me. Then one day, it just so happened, it was that moment of clarity to decide what I want to project. This thing has no fuckin’ limits.”

Taylor recalled the first Slipknot he had attended before officially joining, which also happened to be the first Slipknot show ever. “It was so many different things all at once,” he recalled of the experience. It was visual. It was visceral. It was antagonistic. It was dangerous. It was powerful. I had never seen a band like that before.”

For Taylor, the masks offered uniqueness to the band going against the grain of what was occurring in music at the moment they launched. “That mask for me has always been a physical representation of the person inside me who just never had a voice,” he says. “It just allows me to be me.”