Eloy Casagrande discusses nerves and uncertainty during his Slipknot audition

Former Sepultura drummer Eloy Casagrande discussed how he joined Slipknot in early 2024 before the heavy metal legends’ 25th anniversary North American tour began in a recent interview with Thomann’s Drum Bash, as per Blabbermouth. Eloy remarked this while thinking back on how he handled his first jam with the other members of Slipknot.

When I was invited to do the audition for Slipknot, I didn’t know how the guys wanted the drums to sound like, what they were looking for, if they wanted just a replacement for Joey [Jordison], for [more recent former Slipknot drummer] Jay [Weinberg], or if they wanted a new, a different personality on the drums. So that was my biggest concern at the beginning — how I’m gonna approach the songs. Can I put myself into the music, or I have to respect all the original recordings, the original drummers? So when I went to the audition, I knew all the songs, but I knew also things that I could change by myself. But at the beginning, I was trying just to be the most respectful that I could be for the original arrangements. Don’t change the music, don’t change the songs. And then from time, like after a few months, I was able to change a few things. The band liked that. They also wanted to have a different personality on the drums. They wanted to have myself, Eloy, on the drums and not any previous member playing the drums.

Eloy elaborated on the extent to which he was able to express himself on the drums during his Slipknot audition.

“It depends a lot on the gig that you’re gonna get. But the best thing that you can do is to talk to people, talk to the other musicians. Don’t try to guess what they want from you, what they expect from you. So if you get a new gig, just go there and talk to the other musicians, what they are looking for, what they expect. And then you can prepare yourself. And in my case, I didn’t have the chance to talk to Slipknot before I went for the audition. I just met the guys on the first day of the audition, so I had to be prepared for everything. But I had that mentality — if you don’t know how it’s gonna be, just be prepared the best you can in different perspectives.

When asked if he feels at ease performing in shows where he can’t be himself and is merely supposed to mimic parts that have already been recorded and played by another drummer, Eloy responded as follows.

Oh, yes. I did that a few times in my life. And some of the arrangements that I had to play either with Slipknot or with Sepultura, I had to respect the original arrangement. Some of this stuff is very classic; you’re not supposed to change that. There are just a few things, small details that I can change, some drum fills, but the structure of the song, the soul, the meaning, you cannot change that. But also if I had to play exactly the same thing, I wanna be able to do that, I was able to do that. But I feel a lot more comfortable if I have my freedom of speech, my freedom of musicality, if I can be myself at least a little bit. And that’s something that I have always been concerned [about] in my life — to be in a band, to be in a place that I can express myself, that I’m not gonna be just a hired gun, a hired musician playing whatever they want me to play. And I was lucky enough to play in bands that the guys, the other musicians, they wanted me to be myself. They wanted me to have my perspective regarding music. So I’m very lucky regarding that. But in the past, yes, when I was a teenager and I was playing professionally, doing some pop gigs, country gigs in Brazil, a lot of recording sessions, I was just doing what the producer wanted me to do, or the band wanted me to do. I was having fun either way because I was playing the drums by the end of the day, but it’s different when you can just sit and the people wanna listen to you. I’m very grateful for that.