Jay Weinberg recalls Slipknot debut timed with Joey Jordison exit

Jay Weinberg’s first jam with Slipknot landed in one of the most brutal 24-hour stretches in modern metal drumming history. He walked into a blind, cryptic audition in December 2013 without knowing exactly who he was meeting, then learned the next day that Joey Jordison’s departure had been made public.

That timing turned a routine search for a drummer into a career-defining collision. Slipknot announced on December 12, 2013, that Jordison had left the band for “personal reasons,” and Weinberg’s recollection makes clear how little daylight separated his first contact with the band from the end of an era. For fans, it remains one of the most emotional handoffs in heavy metal, because Jordison was not just another player in the kit chair. He was a founding force whose style helped define Slipknot’s identity.

Weinberg officially joined Slipknot in 2014 and made his recorded debut on “The Negative One.” That led directly into .5: The Gray Chapter, released later that year as Slipknot’s first studio album in six years and their first without both Jordison and founding bassist Paul Gray. The record arrived with the weight of a reset, and Weinberg’s entrance gave the band a new engine just as they were trying to move forward without two of the people most tied to their earlier sound.

The full arc matters because Weinberg’s time in Slipknot eventually became its own long chapter. He stayed with the band for about a decade, playing his final show on November 3, 2023, at Hell & Heaven Metal Fest in Toluca, Mexico. Slipknot then announced their split with him in November 2023, and in February 2024 they introduced Eloy Casagrande, formerly of Sepultura, as his replacement.

Jordison died in July 2021 at age 46, which gives Weinberg’s recollection even more weight now. The story is no longer just about a replacement stepping into a famous role. It is about how fast a metal dynasty can change, how public the scrutiny gets, and how a drummer can be asked to carry history from the moment the sticks hit the heads.