“This is one of our angrier albums,” Taylor declares. Insanity went into making it, and I’m so proud of what we accomplished. On this album, I learned you may have your whole life to create your first album, but you have the rest of your life to do it again. By the time your second record comes along, you have to write under the gun, and other problems arise from touring the world. You’re blessed if the world pays attention to it. “When you get into this fucking business, they teach you really quickly that you have your whole life to create your first record. “I learned something important while working on this,” Clown continues. He helped pull us back into that world.”Įarly within the sessions, the members tapped into a raw aggression akin to their breakout self-titled debut and 2001’s landmark Iowa, but filtered through fifteen years of wisdom and refinement. Greg helped us remember what we are as a band. He was the last guy we worked with when we were functioning as a tight unit on Vol. “There was one incredibly important thing he brought to the table. “Greg is very involved and easy to work with, and he’s got a great sense of humor,” says Root. 3: The Subliminal Verses collaborator Greg Fidelman at the iconic Sunset Sound and Westlake Studios. They co-produced the effort with their Vol. He’s helping me through this process’.”Įarly 2014 saw Slipknot secretly retreat to Los Angeles to record the follow-up to 2008’s platinum-selling All Hope Is Gone, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200.
It made me feel like, ‘Shit, he is with me. I’m not a very spiritual person, but it opened my eyes to when people say, ‘Just because someone is gone doesn’t mean he’s not with you’. It hit me like a ton of bricks one day, ‘That’s what Paul used to do when he wrote’. I was exploring the neck of the guitar more. “Last November, I put my head down, opened up my MacBook Pro, and started writing at my computer every day. “When we were making previous records, I’d always go to Paul’s house and learn what he was demoing,” he recalls. He unconsciously took a page out of an old friend’s book in the process.
Initially, Root began feverishly writing songs in his garage back in Florida, starting awaken the album’s instrumental structure. If he could hear it, he’d be so fucking stoked.” It took everything we had learned from him over the years to make this album work. We started looking for the heavier, more musically creative, and intricate ways to do things. In a lot of ways, this brought out the ‘Inner Paul’ in everybody. “There was a weird moment when we figured out that it was going to take all of us to fill in the blank Paul’s creativity had left,” admits Taylor. Then, we could communicate through the music.” We all reached a point where we could talk about things and feel things. We had a little time to mourn, and we needed that. I think we did channel some real positive feelings, even if the delivery is a little angry here and there. I say Paul’s name every day, and I smile. Everything happens for a reason, and something clicked at the beginning of the year. “I was immediately aware I wouldn’t want to go in the studio too quickly because it would’ve been impossible not seeing him there. “After Paul passed, I was struggling-as we all were,” exclaims Clown. 5: The Gray Chapter started to organically gestate. Shawn “Clown” Crahan, Jim Root, Mick Thomson, Chris Fehn, Sid Wilson, and Craig Jones -experienced a collective revelation, and ideas for their fifth full-length album. However, in the summer of 2013, the musicians-Corey Taylor, M. Despite triumphant headlining shows at Sonisphere, Download, and The Rockstar Mayhem Festival stateside over the next two years, whether or not they would record again remained unclear. Founding bassist and songwriter Paul Gray tragically left this earth, and his band spiraled into overwhelming sorrow and sadness. The Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum legendary hard rock visionaries found themselves facing their most trying hour on May 24, 2010. The members of Slipknot can certainly attest to that. The best art can often be born in the darkest of times.