Amerikkalaisen Slipknotin basisti Paul Gray löytyi kuolleena iowalaisesta hotellihuoneesta maanantaina 25.5., aamupäivällä Yhdysvaltain aikaa. Gray oli maskeihin verhoutuvan metallijättiläisen perustajäseniä.
Useat kollegat ovat jo ehtineet muistelemaan menehtynyttä metallimuusikkoa. Muun muassa Hellyeahin, Lamb Of Godin, Megadethin ja Kornin jäsenet ovat ilmaisseet suuren surunsa muusikon poismenon johdosta.
Gray oli myös olennainen osa HAIL!-yhtyettä, jonka kiertueen oli määrä saapua Sauna Open Air -festareille Tampereelle. Rundin kohtalo on nyt avoinna, mutta asiasta tiedotetaan toivottavasti mahdollisimman pian.
Paul Grayn maskiton videohaastattelu löytyy täältä.
38-vuotiaana kuolleen Grayn kuolinsyy selviää ruumiinavauksessa. Tapaukseen ei tiettävästi liity rikosta. Amerikkalaismuusikon kuolema ei kuitenkaan tullut kovin suurena yllätyksenä, sillä mies kertoi avoimesti ongelmistaan Revolver-lehdelle vuonna 2008:
"I was pissed at Corey Taylor and Jim Root for doing Stone Sour. I thought, ’Fuck, we should be working on Slipknot. But we really needed that time apart. During the downtime I played with Unida and jammed with friends, but mostly I did a lot of drinking and some drugs — some heavy, heavy drugs… lots of heroin. I was shooting speedballs every day. And then pills. I was on everything, man. In the beginning I kind of had my shit under control, but after a while, no. I became an addict.
I wrote a bunch of stuff for Vol. 3 — like I do every record — but I would spend half the time in the bathroom shooting up. I’d be trying to play, and I’d fall out of my chair a couple times and fall asleep in the middle of tracking a song. There was a lot of depression going on. I wasn’t mad at anybody, but everyone else was and I felt, Oh, fuck, my family is falling apart. This has been the best thing that ever happened to me. And once you get to a certain point with drugs it’s fuckin’ so hard going through withdrawal. It’s not that you don’t want to quit. You just can’t. Halfway through the record, the band had an intervention on me and I ended up going to rehab.
Going through rehab in L.A. kept me good for a little while, but then we got back out on the road and I just knew too many people and I started using a lot again on and off. I had some near-death experiences — nothing I’m gonna go into any detail about — but I definitely pushed it to the very end and I’m still here. I have friends, though, who pushed it just the same way, and they are dead. Finally, I got left in rehab at the end of the arena tour and I missed the last six shows. Then, afterwards… Well, idle hands do the devil’s work. I met my wife and she stayed with me and helped me, but then I’d full on run with it. Finally she said, I can’t sit around and watch you kill yourself. I was living in L.A. at the time, which wasn’t helping because it was so easy to get drugs. So, I moved back to Iowa with her and went to my doctor and got straightened out. And it’s been a good couple years now that I’ve been clean."