Jay Weinberg has spoken at length about the period following his November 2023 dismissal from Slipknot, and about the therapy that helped him through it. In a new interview with Bryce Maopolski of HeartSupport — a nonprofit providing free, music-based mental health support to people in the heavy music community — the drummer described feeling, in his own words, like a tangled ball of rusted barbed wire. What he says about what came next is more useful than any of the headlines about the firing itself.
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Scott Penfold covers the Jay Weinberg interview on today’s Metal Breakdown Daily — what he actually said about the search for a therapist, and why the part most coverage will skip is the part that matters. Download the free Loaded Radio App on Apple iOS and Google Play and get it every weekday morning.
What actually happened, and when
The timing is worth laying out, because it explains a lot.
November 3, 2023 — Weinberg plays his final show with Slipknot at the Hell & Heaven festival in Toluca, Mexico.
November 5 — Slipknot announce via social media that they’ve made a creative decision to part ways with him.
November 11 — Weinberg posts on Instagram that he was heartbroken and blindsided to receive the phone call, the news of which most people learned shortly afterwards.
Two weeks later — he undergoes an outpatient procedure to repair a torn labrum in his left hip and shave down a misshapen part of his femur.
Which means that within a fortnight of losing a job he’d held for a decade, he was immobile at home, recovering from surgery, with nothing to do but think about it.
His own description: enduring all of that at once was a mental and physical grind, every moment of every day, just to feel like a normal person.
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The part most coverage will skip
Here’s the genuinely useful bit, and it’s the reason this interview is worth more than a quote-grab.
Weinberg wasn’t new to therapy. He’d tried it in his early twenties, living in New Jersey and New York. His assessment of that experience: nothing that felt like a match made in heaven. It helped somewhat.
That’s where an enormous number of people stop. You try it once, it doesn’t click, you conclude it isn’t for you, and you never go back.
He went back.
Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024 he started looking for a therapist near where he now lives in Tennessee, which took time. And what unlocked it was a recommendation — from a very close friend, the man who married him and his wife, who suggested his own therapist.
Weinberg’s words on that moment: it finally felt like an unlocking of a door. A door he’d tried many keys on that just wouldn’t open.
He now speaks to that person once a week and says it helps him sort through thoughts and process events and circumstances that are difficult to make sense of. His observation on why that matters: when life doesn’t make sense and is difficult to process, you feel like you’re the crazy one.
The first one not being a fit doesn’t mean the thing doesn’t work. It means you haven’t found the right person yet. That’s the takeaway, and it’s coming from someone plenty of people in this scene will actually listen to.
What he’s careful to say
His framing throughout is unusually grounded, and worth quoting properly because it avoids both extremes.
He’s explicit that none of this is a case of being fixed and all better. He views it as part of being a healthy person — tending to more than just the physical rigours of what he enjoys putting himself through.
He talks about being okay with not being the person who naturally has all the answers, and about sometimes needing to reach out to his community, or to someone he trusts, to get through a challenging moment.
And his description of what therapy actually does is the least oversold thing you’ll read on the subject: it doesn’t solve anything in life, but it eases the process of getting to the next moment.
He also notes that life doesn’t get less complex — he finds it gets more so — and points out that being an artist means opening your life up to critique and judgement, with pressure that builds over time.
He became a father a couple of months ago, which he says brings a whole new angle to all of it.
HeartSupport
Worth knowing about, since it’s where this conversation came from.
HeartSupport is a nonprofit that provides free, music-based mental health support to people in the heavy music community. Weinberg gave this interview to their development manager, Bryce Maopolski, and the full conversation is on their YouTube channel.
For a scene that has historically been better at writing about pain than dealing with it, an organisation doing this work — for free, aimed at fans rather than just artists — is genuinely worth supporting.
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The decade before
For context on the size of what ended.
Weinberg discovered Slipknot as a pre-teen, through his father — drummer Max Weinberg of the E Street Band. He was hooked immediately, and by the time he was invited to Los Angeles in 2013 to audition as Joey Jordison’s replacement, he was a serious fan of the band he was trying out for.
Before that he’d played with Against Me! and Madball.
His first Slipknot album, 2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter, earned three Grammy nominations — two for Best Metal Performance and one for Best Rock Album. In an odd footnote, the band initially declined to name the musicians playing drums and bass on that tour, and Weinberg and bassist Alessandro “Vman” Venturella were outed by a disgruntled former drum tech who posted a backstage call sheet on Instagram.
He also played on 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind and 2022’s The End, So Far, both of which topped Billboard’s rock albums chart.
Former Sepultura drummer Eloy Casagrande replaced him in February 2024.
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Slipknot’s revolving door
Weinberg’s exit is one of several in recent years, and the band’s history of departures is long enough to have become part of the story — we’ve traced the full arc of every lineup change separately.
Most recently, Sid Wilson confirmed his own departure in August 2026 after twenty-nine years, and has since resurfaced working on new music with his own label. No reason was given in that case either.
Our breakdown of who’s actually in Slipknot right now has the current picture, and Look Outside Your Window — the long-delayed experimental side record — finally arrived this year.
What’s different about Weinberg’s version is that he isn’t relitigating any of it. He isn’t asking anyone to take a side. He’s describing what he did about how it felt.
Nearly three years on, at a moment when heavy music is bigger than it’s been in decades, that’s a genuinely valuable thing for someone from one of the biggest bands in the genre to put on the record.
TL;DR
- What’s happened: Jay Weinberg spoke to HeartSupport about seeking therapy following his November 2023 dismissal from Slipknot.
- The timing: he was told on November 5, 2023, two days after his final show. Two weeks later he had hip surgery and spent the recovery, in his words, on the couch alone with his thoughts.
- His description of that period: feeling like a tangled ball of rusted barbed wire.
- The key point: he’d tried therapy in his early twenties and it wasn’t a fit. He went looking again years later, and a friend’s recommendation was what finally worked — he described it as unlocking a door he’d tried many keys on.
- Where he is now: speaking to a therapist weekly, and a father for the first time as of a couple of months ago. He’s clear it isn’t a case of being fixed, just part of being a healthy person.
- The interview: conducted by Bryce Maopolski of HeartSupport, a nonprofit providing free mental health support to the heavy music community.
FAQ
Why was Jay Weinberg fired from Slipknot?
Slipknot announced on November 5, 2023 that they had made what they described as a creative decision to part ways with him. Weinberg said days later that he was heartbroken and blindsided by the phone call. Neither party has given a more detailed public explanation.
What did Jay Weinberg say about therapy?
He described feeling emotionally like a tangled ball of rusted barbed wire after his dismissal, and said he sought out a therapist near his home in Tennessee. He had tried therapy in his early twenties without finding a good fit, and said that persevering and finding the right person years later felt like unlocking a door he’d tried many keys on. He now speaks to a therapist weekly.
When did Jay Weinberg join Slipknot?
In 2013, replacing founding drummer Joey Jordison. He played on .5: The Gray Chapter (2014), We Are Not Your Kind (2019) and The End, So Far (2022), and his final show was at the Hell & Heaven festival in Toluca, Mexico on November 3, 2023.
Who replaced Jay Weinberg in Slipknot?
Former Sepultura drummer Eloy Casagrande, who joined in February 2024.
Is Jay Weinberg related to Max Weinberg?
Yes. Max Weinberg, the E Street Band drummer, is his father — and the person through whom Jay first discovered Slipknot as a pre-teen.
A man who tried therapy once, decided it wasn’t for him, and went back years later anyway. If you recognise yourself in that, it’s worth another go — and HeartSupport exist for exactly this. Keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.
The post Jay Weinberg Says Being Fired By Slipknot Led Him To Seek Out Therapy appeared first on Loaded Radio.
