Jay Weinberg has opened up about seeking therapy after being sacked from Slipknot, saying the process “taught me a lot, and continues to”.
The drummer parted ways with the iconic metal band back in 2023, after they made a “creative decision” to go in a different direction. He joined in 2013, and said he was “heartbroken and blindsided” by the move at the time. He then revealed earlier this year that he thinks the decision “remains confusing”.
He recently sat down with Bryce Maopolski, the development manager at music-based mental health non-profit HeartSupport, and discussed the emotional journey that followed his unexpected dismissal.
“I kind of found myself as like a tangled ball of rusted barbed wire, is what it really kind of felt like emotionally,” Weinberg said, per Blabbermouth. He went on to say he had to enlist “expertise” and “know-how” from mental health professionals to set about “untangling that rusted-over ball of barbed wire”.
“So for myself,” he continued, “that took some seeking therapy, seeking a therapist here where I live in Tennessee, which took time as well. I wasn’t a complete stranger to it. In my early twenties when I lived on the East Coast, in New Jersey and New York, I had experience with therapy.”
He said that while previous experiences were not quite “a match made in heaven”, it helped that he was familiar with the process, and with the help of a trusted friend, he was recommended a therapist.
“It finally felt like an unlocking of a door, like a door that I’d tried many keys trying to open and it just wouldn’t,” he said. “I try to stick to once a week, and I’ve found that [it] really helps me in sorting through thoughts, sorting through those challenging things and processing events and life circumstances that are difficult to process, to make sense of.
“And when life doesn’t make sense, when life is difficult to process, you feel like you’re the crazy one. And it’s an ongoing process.”
Weinberg later said it took him some time to realise that he was “okay with not being the person who naturally has all the answers, and I sometimes need to reach out to my community, to someone I trust, to help me get through a challenging moment.”
He went on to reference a surgery he underwent just weeks after being fired from Slipknot, and said: “I mean, talk about a mental and physical grind every moment of every day just to feel like a normal person. The experience definitely taught me a lot, and continues to. None of this is like, ‘I’m fixed and I’m all better.’ I just view it as this is part of being a healthy person.
“This is part of the journey, really prioritising this so the events of life, the circumstances that you can’t control, people that surprise you, all that sort of stuff, it will test you. And so knowing that this is a part of the process of enduring that in some respects was very eye-opening, and it’s just part of my practice now.”
Since leaving Slipknot, Weinberg has been a part of multiple other music projects, including joining Suicidal Tendencies, recording with Fuming Mouth, and joining forces with Canadian group Softcult for new song ‘Drown Fountain’.
Weinberg has also launched his own new band, Portraits of an Apparition, and had started work on some solo material. He recently shed light on the new musical projects, saying that is now able to pursue them after a period of not having the “legal ability” to work with other artists.
Slipknot returned with a surprise single ‘Arsenal’ earlier this week – with the track marking their first new music in three years, and first release since the departure of Sid Wilson and the joining of drummer Eloy Casagrande.
Met with mixed reviews online, some fans were surprised by how much turntable scratching the song features, especially given this year’s exit of Sid Wilson. Guitarist Jim Root later came out and said the track was not reflective of the album that they are currently working on.
Root was also quick to respond to rumours of Wilson’s leaving the band at the start of last month, telling fans “don’t believe everything you read”, although they later confirmed that they would “no longer be associated” with the keyboardist and turntablist in a post that they swiftly deleted.
Wilson then clarified things by updating his Instagram profile to reveal that his time in the band was from “1997-2026“. He doesn’t feature in the music video, and the band now seems to have eight members, instead of the famous line-up of nine.
Slipknot’s new album will be the first since 2022’s ‘The End, So Far’, and while details about the upcoming LP remain vague, the band have revealed that they’ve been working with Matt Wallace on the record and have “so much material”.
