Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. Crowz and Slipknot (1995–2000)

In 1995 there were two rules. Slipknot had to play what they wanted to play and it didn't matter what they played, who they played to and the cost of seeing them play should never matter. The second rule was that there needed to be 3 drummers. The members came from several different bands (Pre-Slipknot Bands ) and each had the common view on the way that everything was going in the town of Des Moines, they were sick of it; there was no music scene, it was hard to get bands CDs, etc... . As a result Slipknot was born with one mission, this mission being to 'Clean up the music industry'. The band's aims remain to be to create a sound the world has never heard, a vision no one has ever seen, this can be clearly seen by the hype to Slipknot's second album. They sensed people were ready for a show, rather than some guys just playing some music.
The band achieved a stable line-up in late 1995, and released a demo entitled Mate.Feed.Kill.Repeat on Halloween 1996. The demo was distributed by the small, Nebraska-based label -ismist Recordings. A year later Slipknot hired Corey Taylor (Stone Sour frontman) as the new lead vocalist and pushed Anders to percussion. They were always creating new material and were planning on releasing a second self released CD, Crowz, however this never came to fruition as they went through more line-up changes and eventually got signed to Roadrunner Records.
At the insistence of Midwest Promotion representative John Kuliak, Roadrunner Records signed the band in 1997. The band's first major label release, Slipknot, produced by Ross Robinson, was released in June of 1999. Regarding the album, Rick Anderson of All Music Guide wrote "You thought Limp Bizkit was heavy? They're The Osmonds. Slipknot is something else entirely." Also in 1999, the band was part of the Ozzfest, which greatly expanded the band's fanbase. In early 2000, the album was certified platinum, a first for any album released by Roadrunner Records. In July 2001, Q magazine named Slipknot as one of the "50 Heaviest Albums of All Time".