Slipknot have existed through the bulk of their career on a record label, continuously releasing albums, but with their contract being up following The End, So Far, percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan recently suggested that the band may forgo albums in favor of singles moving forward. That line of questioning was then broached with Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor at a recent Monster-Mania Con Q&A session.
A few weeks back, Clown spoke with NME, stating, “I always thought, ‘What would it be like if Slipknot was big enough that we weren’t held to albums?’ Let’s say Clown could convince you, ‘Hey, instead of waiting two years for 12 songs, I’m gonna give you one song every month.’ So in reality, I’m shaving a year off for the same thing.”
The percussionist elaborated that the singles could still serve as a complete release, coming with their own artwork, and would still cost less than an individual song. Plus, it also opens the doors to collaboration with other artists. “The philosophy is for the fans to be sucked into thought, rather than just heavy metal, record labels, video channels, radio… No, it’s the love of music — you love us as artists, you love our band, you know we have our own filter… Look at what we can do when we are free to dip our paintbrushes anywhere,” he explained.
When asked about Clown’s comments at Monster-Mania Con, Taylor responded (as transcribed by Blabbermouth and shared via the Rock N’ Roll Experience video below), “It’s kind of difficult to get nine people on the same page anymore, especially we’re old and dicks. But the cool thing is that we all still get excited about good ideas.”
He explained, “[Guitarists] Jim [Root] and Mick [Thomson] are so good at writing music. Me and Clown work really well coming up with stuff together, VMan [bassist Alessandro Venturella] is actually really good. So we’ve done so much in our career that at this point we could sit back and just do EPs. I mean, I’ve got a good idea for a double concept record with a whole storyline that goes along with it that I would love to do. But the cool thing is that we’ve kind of established our history, so whatever comes next will naturally be something that we want to do. So whether it’s go in and just blast out a couple psycho tunes and just have fun doing that or we go in and do a very elaborate plan, like a storyline or something, either way it’ll be something that we’re really into.”
He went on to add, “I back the group, you know? At this point, we’ve released so much music and we’re off our label now, so sky’s our limit; we can kind of do whatever we want. So whatever we do next will be something that we are all on the same page for, which is something you can’t always say.”
While Slipknot’s future remains a blank slate, their present includes promotion of their recently released The End, So Far album. The set has released the singles “The Chapeltown Rag,” “The Dying Song (Time to Sing)” and “Yen.” You can catch the band finishing out the year on tour in Mexico and South America, followed by dates in Europe, the U.K., Australia and Japan next year. Get touring and ticketing info here.
Corey Taylor Speaks on Slipknot Possibly Doing Singles Instead of Albums
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Push your fingers into your eyes.
*Last updated July 29, 2022. We still need time with the rest of the new album!
