Aunty Donna’s Mark Bonanno was the latest guest on Wil Anderson’s Wilosophy podcast. The conversation reveals that Bonanno is a diehard Slipknot and Radiohead stan.
Anderson brings up Bonanno’s involvement in bands and his love for music.
“I grew up at a time where I got to witness the rise and fall of nu-metal,” says Bonanno, trying to explain his affinity for metal.
“Like I was right there when it hit big. When rock was sort of dying, then nu-metal came in and that took over.”
“And then I got to see it crash and burn and die a horrible, horrible death as well. And I was there for all of it.”
“Nu-metal is not a dirty word in my opinion.”
But then he gets to the Slipknot obsession and it’s really wholesome… Other than likening their debut record to getting punched in the face.
“I was so obsessed with Slipknot,” says Mark Bonanno. “The first Slipknot record, just enamoured by it.”
“Like I’d never liked anything as much as I liked that before, in my entire life.
“Music was there. I grew up with the Beatles, a lot of ‘Best Ofs’ and stuff that my parents introduced me to. So I loved the 60s and 70s, and a little bit of the 80s. That was all stuff that was in me.
“But I’d never loved anything until that first Slipknot record. I’m not lying to tell you it was all I listened to for 12 months of my 12-year-old life.
“It’s that pure energy. That first song,” he says, talking about ‘(Sic)’ from Slipknot’s self-titled album.
“It just feels like they’re tearing the room that they’re recording it in apart.”
“Like it’s just the smashing. It just hits you and hits you in your gut. It makes my eyes want to pop out of my fucking head, man.”
“It shakes me, still to this day, it shakes me when I hear it. The rhythms, it’s so fast, I’d never heard anything that fast before.”
“It just punches you in the fucking face and I’m a pacifist but I like that.”
Mark explains elsewhere in the podcast that he played in a metal band as a vocalist in high school, but didn’t know how to scream properly.
“Because I wanted to do it so bad, I could do it. And I could scream really well. Like there was a period in my life where I just had the most incredible, metal high-pitched scream,” he says.
“And because I was doing it wrong, after about four years of doing it, I just destroyed my voice.”
To listen to it, you can hear the music chit chat start from roughly 47:20 and the Slipknot chat from 48:13 below.
