Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor is one of rock's more outspoken musicians and he's now weighed in on the current divide in the country after recent shootings at the hands of cops in Louisiana and Minnesota, as well as the assassination of police officers by a sniper in Dallas.

Speaking in a video message for the You Rock Foundation, Taylor begins, "I just wanted to reach out and talk a little bit, especially seeing where we are in the world today between [the sniper attacks in] Dallas, [police shootings in] Minnesota and everything in between. It has been kind of crazy lately. And some of the voices that are out there are saying one thing, trying to pull us apart, splitting hairs and taking various unifying messages and ripping them to shreds beneath the minutiae of just pretentious ignorance. To me, it's very simple. We all matter."

Taylor continues, "There's a time and a place to talk about things like that. However, we are seeing that our black friends, our black family are being … You know, there's a lot of violence going against them. So what we need to do, we need to do, is band together with them and say, yes, black lives do matter, because we all matter. And to fight for those black lives does not mean that you're saying anything against anybody else. You can back up 'black lives matter' and say that cops' lives matter; it's all the same thing. And you can have those different ideas in the same thought, and there's nothing wrong with that, because we do all matter."

"The thing that I've realized is that if music can bring us all together and get us all to care about one another and tear down those color lines, those personality lines, those lines that try to keep us different, if music can rip all of that down, then we can all band together and say, 'Well, if music can bring us together, maybe life in itself is the best way to bring us all together and keep us there,'" adds Taylor. "So anytime you think and feel that maybe things are too much, you're being made to feel like things are too different, things are too overwhelming, you feel like you're not strong enough to stand up not only for yourself but for somebody else, just remember that music and life bring us all together. For a few seconds at a time, we don't feel different; we feel the same. Now if we can hold on to that, if we can hold on to that, and really bring it together, then we can abolish all of this. We can bring this kind of violence to an end." See his video posting below.

Taylor is currently touring with Slipknot on a summer co-headlining tour with Marilyn Manson. Dates can be found here.

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