Jeffery Nothing, the ex-vocalist of Mushroomhead, recently guested on the ADHD Podcast to discuss a multitude of things, including how he believes that Mushroomhead came before Slipknot. (Transcription via The PRP.)

In the same chat, Nothing also addressed the once regularly debated question on who came first, Mushroomhead or Slipknot. It’s been a source of contention between the die hard fans of both groups which has led to some altercations over the years at shows in their respective hometowns. Speaking of that, Nothing stated in the podcast:

“[Former Roadrunner Records senior vice president of A&R] Monte Conner from Roadrunner had a guy shopping us. And at the time we were making more at local shows than they were offering us in advance and they wanted all of our merch; which was like selling crazy already, and the money just didn’t make any sense.

And he basically made his own [version of Mushroomhead] when we said no. And what’s really funny is that I have a friend that would end up backstage at all these festivals, he became friends with Corey [Taylor, Slipknot singer] and Corey said, to quote him, ‘Was I supposed to turn down a million dollars?’ So that’s what that was.”

He later went on to say:

“As far as what I know, I believe Shawn [Crahan] and Joey [Joridson] were the only ones from Des Moines. They had Anders [Anders Colsefni]—I forget what his last name is—he was the singer. And they wanted someone more commercial so they got Corey [Taylor]. I just heard a lot of stories. It’s like… Linkin Park was Hybrid Theory with the other guy rapping and until they brought in Chester [Bennington] they didn’t do anything, but they were made. They were made and some people thought that it was from our model.

And it’s also interesting, somebody that was supposedly in on their discovery made a band afterwards, named Dry Cell. And we played with them at ‘Locobazooka‘ in 2002 and their album was shelved because Linkin Park said ‘If you release them, we’re gone.’ And the singer of that band is now coincidentally the singer of Stone Temple Pilots.

They were this band called No Control at the time of 15,16,17-year-old guys and they would play benefits for firemen and all this stuff and then the guy that found Linkin Park found them and put this Jeff Gutt guy with them, and he was like ten years older than the oldest one of them. They were really good but their record never came out. They had a song on ‘Queen Of The Damned‘…”