‘Seven Deadly Sins: Settling The Argument Between Born Bad And Damaged Good’ is the story and lifetime of Corey Taylor. Told through his own unique philosophy on the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’, this is no straight-forward talking memoir. With his live-for-the-moment attitude, Corey systematically sets out an anecdote for every sin.
Hailing from the state of Iowa, Taylor is the hard-working, hard-living rock singer of bands Slipknot and Stone Sour. Beginning in the early 90’s, after a broken childhood, he left his home and immersed himself into a fierce life of drug abuse, hard-core booze, sex, hurt and turmoil. His music exploded, he became rich and famous and his extreme lifestyle grew by the second. However, his years of chaos have pushed him towards the belief that what is defined as a ‘deadly sin’ isn’t really a sin at all, that it is simply a human characteristic that we all share. In a promotional interview with Jim Florentine, he argued, “Gluttony, greed, lust, rage, envy, sloth and pride are parts of our personalities as people, and if you want to be a good person you have to learn to deal with them.” ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ is the brutally honest confession of a man whose life could have gone drastically wrong at any turn. Follow his soul searching path for self-discovery as he reflects on what it means to be seen as either a “good person” or “bad”. He tells explore music that the ‘deadly seven’ “may lead to sin, but the urge itself isn't a sin. We are all instinctive animals at the end of the day. You can live with these hungers and still be a good person."
For Corey Taylor, ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ marks his literacy debut. Although he’s no stranger to the writing world, Corey is the key lyricist for both of his bands, and is a regular columnist for the monthly music magazine ‘Rock Sound.’ In the Jim Florentine video interview, Corey commented on how he had; “been threatening to write a book for a long time, but since every Tom, Dick and Harry writes an autobiography, I didn’t want to do just that.” Later he reiterated “my approach to writing is the same as my approach to music: I don’t want to do what everybody else is doing.” So it is clear to witness that Corey has created something unique. The book is delivered with an autobiographical style, yet at the same time remains a book that strives to make a philosophical point. As he discusses in depth his own philosophies, he also balances it out with a backlog of personal stories. In the process, he dissects his experiences as a sinner, and for your consideration reconstructs the originally appointed ‘deadly sins’ into what he calls ‘the new magnificent seven.’ The book is centred on the subject and nature of sin, which prominently delivers a sense of seriousness and poignancy. However, Corey never fails to please his readers with elements of great humour and an array of sarcastic phrases. He often finds it in him to insult celebrities that he knows his audience will relate to, “when Paris Hilton can top the bestsellers' lists, we are one more Connect Four move closer to Armageddon” is just one example of his razor sharp wit. His writing style successfully finds the balance between darkness and the light of heart.
Corey’s strong mind and solid ideas do enable him to raise some very agreeable points. Kicking off with the discussion of wrath, let’s give an overview of his commodious beliefs. He states that “when used for venting purposes rage can be cathartic, and allows you to feel good when getting things off your chest.” Cleverly he leaves us as readers to question ‘what is bad about that?’ He further writes in this chapter “Rage is to feel, like love and hate, but those things are not part of our so-called “Deadly Seven”, am I right folks?”
Detailing a personal story, where as a young boy he witnessed a man brutally beat up a woman, he leads on to assert that rage is not a sin. It is however the trigger than can commit a sin. As a reader we could all come to realise that this appears to make perfect sense, and this opening story is just a small glimpse of the incredibly insane life of Corey Taylor about to be unfolded to you.
Next comes lust, a chapter filled with Corey’s shocking sexual encounters. From losing his virginity at age eleven with a messed up baby sister, to been graphically raped by a male friend, this section painfully details it all. Yet it comes as no surprise that he still stand by his strong judgement that lust is in no way a sin and is only a human trait embedded in us all. “Sex is not a crime, so why is lust a sin?” he asks us. Corey writes that it is perfectly ok to think lustful thoughts, but after which it would be your responsibility to control your actions.
Perhaps the most humours chapter of the book is pride and vanity. His definitions of a vain person are presented comically because we can all relate to that one person in our lives that we know is like that. He tells us “vanity is constantly checking every mirror, storefront window, tea kettle, microwave door, windshield and any other reflective surface just to get a glimpse of your fine self.” He enlightens us with the tale of an ex-girlfriend who used to drive past a certain bank every day, even if the bank was out of her way. And why? Just to catch a look at herself driving by in the long picture window that ran the length of the building. “Vanity can make us act like selfish cowards” he implies, “but that does not make it a sin”. The chapter seems to overall present the message that if something does not hurt another person in the process, then where is the sin in that.
Moving onto sloth, Corey gives us the origin of the sin “in ancient times, people were expected to work all week and only rest on Sabbath or Sunday, god forbid you tried to take off a Tuesday to watch your kids ball game”. So we discover the root of sloth lay in the virtues of menial labour. This chapter makes a simple point, that the sin has out-lived time and is no longer applicable to the modern day society. This wouldn’t be a chapter from the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ if it didn’t have that meaningful Corey anecdote behind it. So here we learn about his fight with depression, as he sunk to rock bottom and how he “once spend a whole week in his pajama bottoms, tethered to his couch, ready to let oxygen off the hook”. He describes how he “wanted to wallow in bullshit until someone came to take the pain away.” Never failing to hit us with poignancy Corey immediately uplifts us with the message that only you have the power to help yourself, but sometimes you are just too busy withdrawing from it.
The elements of envy and greed come hand in hand. Corey explains that he used envy and greed as motivational tools to achieve something in his life. He saw something successful from other person and strived to do even better himself. In the Jim Florentine interviews he quotes, “One person’s envy is another person’s drive”, so when he presents his argument that envy and greed are human character traits in us all, it is almost impossible to disagree.
“Did I ever tell you I used to live in a closet?” he asks us in the opening line for his chapter on gluttony. Following next is the heart-breaking tale of a childhood experience that compelled him towards drug addiction. Addiction been his best example of gluttony, this is boldly his relevance to the personal story. Not failing to apply his prominate theory he comments that “sins make people stupid, not deadly. Stupid”. He further moves onto detail the painful story behind his alcohol addiction and how he thinks self-esteem is a key factor to gluttony. Feeling like you need to crave something to fill a void being the logic behind that thought.
The final chapter defines Corey’s new philosophical creation of sins. To a great extent these could be considered as genius in their simplicity and relevance. He creates his new magnificent seven based on the concept that the original seven are out-lived for the post-modern world. “I give you the New Seven Deadly Sins: murder, rape, child abuse, torture, theft, lying, and bad music.” What is interesting and makes most sense of all is his theory that a sin should be against the law, therefore a true representation of human pain. So although wrath, sloth, greed, envy, gluttony and lust and pride are things that connect us as human beings, they do not break the law. As a reader we cannot argue that the first six of his newly appointed sins are evil acts, which in some way inflict pain on others. However, he intentionally leaves the seventh ‘bad music’ open to interpretation. Justifying his choice with reasoning he passionately speaks that, “bad music is the murder to the true art of music in general.” When giving his opinion on bad music he believes that in today’s society “you do not have to be exceptional to make it in the music industry anymore.” He goes on to vent that “it’s this disgusting trend that makes the human voice sound more like a keyboard caricature than any form of singing. Now all you have to do is talk into a microphone and your engineer and producer will do the rest.” Although clarifying that he “does not like to name names” he bites back once again at today’s generation of female celebrities, such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. He claims that they “get a record deal based solely on their notoriety.” He remains passionate about his views on the music industry when he furthers this by saying bad music “steal air time from more deserving bands” and that “undiscovered geniuses are giving up on their dreams because of the mediocrity of popular radio.” He expresses that he knows “bad music is a matter of opinion,” however knowing that the majority of his reader will be his dedicated rock fans, Corey cleverly confirms he is “fairly confident that more people agree than you suspect.” After reading the autobiography as a whole, his submission of ‘bad music’ as a sin does not come as a surprise at all. As a man who has literally had his life saved by the power of music and lyrics, his justification for the choice is heart-warming in its message. He simply wouldn’t be alive today without the creation of “good” music.
Corey’s impacting writing style may lead his generation of young music fans to believe his work provides as a bible of self-help. As a man who has practically done it all, his young followers could potentially learn a lot from his past issues. Corey seems to connect directly to his readers by impacting them with clear intentional statements about life. The dominating message has been his belief and acceptance to “let go of guilt and past mistakes”. He continuously emphasises the process of taking what you need from the past and learning from it. In the promotional interviews, Corey voices that “you can’t let the past define you, only guide you, don’t carry it for the rest of your life, let go of the guilt and move on,” something we can all probably relate to in some way or another. Injecting his words of wisdom into our systems a final time, he draws his book to a close, “it’s very simple, live your life, no matter what that life is.”
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