Clown Says Slipknot Have 27 New Songs in Various Stages; Next Album May Be a Double
Slipknot keg abuser Shawn “Clown” Crahan has offered NME a massive update on the current state of Slipknot. Some of is it in semi-comprehensible Clown-speak where he seems to contradict himself from one sentence to the next… for example, he literally at one point says “[W]e have seven or eight [songs that] are completed. They’re not completed songs, that’s far from the truth.” But the general takeaway is that the band have roughly twenty-seven new songs in various stages of being complete; that Clown hopes to have a double album’s worth of material by the time they start recording; that the band has aspirations of possibly making a concept album; and that there’s been some discussion of potential cool and unusual ways for the band to tour in support of that release.
Keep in mind that none of this is written in stone — it’s just ideas that the band is chewing on right now. The intel is bigger than a grain of salt because it comes straight from Clown, but
On writing the new album:
“I will give you this – we have decided to do things differently. Our label had been bought and sold, people who used to give me advice are gone now, we’re still standing. We’re not going to wait around for Corey Taylor to say that he’s ready, no one’s going to wait for me to finish directing a movie, the same thing goes if someone wants to go out on tour with someone else.”
“Every three or four months we’ve been getting together and we’ve been writing for up to 30 days. Currently, we have about 27 pieces of work – about seven or eight are completed. They’re not completed songs, that’s far from the truth. That’s where people start fighting over Corey Taylor not being there or Jim wanting to do something else. We as artists have demanded that we get together every three or four months and blow our brains out with art. We’ve been trying to create as much art as possible.”
On the possibility of a double album and/or concept album:
“For the three years we toured we were writing and recording the whole time. We’ll be getting together in September. Corey Taylor is doing his thing right now with Stone Sour, and when he’s done, he’ll need a little time off. He’s always done that. Then he’ll be right back in it, writing Slipknot songs and lyrics.
“A lot of us are meeting up in September to start working on those 27 pieces of music and we’re going to add to that. Our goal is to get to somewhere where it feels like we could have a double album. Whether or not we’ll get to that, I have no idea. It’s almost an impossible thing to arrive at because you have to have so much music and pick what’s right.
“But I would like to have a double album and I would like to have a concept album. I’ve been speaking to Corey and Jim [Root] and we’re not just going to ‘do it,’ we’re not going to be contrived. It has to be right, it has to work for all of us.”
On plans to promote the release live:
“It’s a beautiful thing to think ‘holy shit, we have six albums and we have to make a setlist’,” said Clown. We either have to go up in time, which is difficult because we like to just go for it and give everyone a bloody nose. It’s very unlikely that we’ll be doing a loner set, unless we do set changes, outfit changes, acoustic breaks – that’s something that we’ve been talking about too. We’ve also been talking about bringing it down to a small club tour.
“I’m not going to graduate this thing called rock n’ roll unless I can go back to where I started from – I want to get kicked in the balls by the audience. It’s not my fault if security have to work harder. Let the music compel the congregation. I want to go back there and have motherfuckers slap me in the face and have motherfuckers slap me in the face. I need to come back to that epiphany of where we began.”
You can read the entire thing here.
