Paul Gray, who was also widely known as the Pig. He was an American musician, bassist, backing vocalist, main songwriter, and one of the founding members of the renowned heavy metal band Slipknot.

In the past years, the heavy metal band has faced changes in its lineup since its establishment in 1995. 

Paul, alongside Shawn Crahan and Joey Jordison, gave birth to the band and welcomed nine more members since then.

Almost thirteen years ago, the music world lost bassist Paul Gray. Slipknot’s crowd, however, has to suffer the heartbreaking news about Gray’s untimely death.

In 2022, fans took their time to relive Gray’s greatness and his contribution to the music industry, saying that the founding members of the heavy metal band Slipknot would have given more hit songs if he did not pass. 

On May 24, 2022, Aberdeen’s heaviest radio show, Heavy Granite, tweeted about Paul and said, “Still sorely missed.”

Today marks 12 years since we lost Slipknot founder and bassist Paul Gray. Still sorely missed.#slipknot #paulgray

— Heavy Granite (@HeavyGranite) May 24, 2022

Loudwire also shared an interview they had with the bassist in the past, in which he talked about their ‘Slipknot’ song.

According to the late musician, it was the very first song they worked on before they even began working with Joey Jordison.

Paul Gray said, “We all thought the name Slipknot rolled off the tongue pretty easy, and we needed a name so we could play the show. We did one other show before that, and we were called Meld, but we didn’t like that at all. So we went with Slipknot. And that show, people just tripped out. They’d never seen anything like it. After that, we couldn’t really change the name.”

Later shortly after, the band released “All Hope is Gone.”

What was Paul Gray’s cause of death?

In May 2010, it was announced that the 38-year-old Slipknot’s bassist was found dead inside a hotel room.

A hotel worker at the Town Plazza hotel found Gray’s body. According to medical reports, Paul Gray’s cause of death was eventually determined as a drug overdose.

Paul’s wife, Brenna Gray, said that Paul relapsed into drug addiction in 2008. She also raised concerns as his Des Moines, Iowa doctor, Daniel Baldi, continued prescribing the anti-anxiety drug Xanar despite Paul’s records of abusing it.

Brenna Gray said, “I just knew it was his drug of choice, that he’d struggled with it. So I just wasn’t really sure why he was on it, why he needed it along with the medication he was taking for addiction.”

Paul’s doctor, Daniel Baldi, faced nine counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of Gray and eight others.

Before the great loss of Snipknot’s Gray, his wife still found an unused needle floating in their toilet and a bag of it. Two days later, the great musician died.