Jim Root Says Chris Fehn’s Departure Had No Effect on New Slipknot Album

I’d imagine tensions are still pretty within the Slipknot camp regarding the departure of percussionist Chris Fehn. Lawsuits are extremely stressful, and there’s likely way more to the story than is publicly known that is weighing heavily on the band members’ psyches.

That said, guitarist Jim Root was quite diplomatic in his response to a question about how Fehn’s departure affected the new album in a new interview with HMV, commending Fehn for his contributions to Slipknot as a whole but confirming what most of us thought: Fehn didn’t ever add much to the writing process.

“It hasn’t, really [affected the new album]. When we were writing the record, Clown is very involved and he covered it all. It’s hard to answer that. I don’t want to say that Chris didn’t contribute anything. He was a big part of the band, visually. He had a great stage presence and he had some great ideas for percussion. But I can’t say it changed how I worked.”

“How I worked,” we can assume, is shorthand for “how I wrote the album.” And indeed, it’s not difficult to imagine that a band’s tertiary percussionist wasn’t all that involved in their writing process… shit, most band’s primary drummers aren’t! Clown is a special case in that regard, but I’m not shocked to learn Fehn’s biggest contributions weren’t in the studio.

Slipknot’s new album We Are Not Your Kind is out now; listen below, and catch the band on tour in North America now.