Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
In a recently released podcast interview with RIDE BYND, guitarist Jim Root of Slipknot talked extensively about what to anticipate from the masked metal group’s upcoming eighth studio album, as per theprp. During that long two-hour conversation, Root discussed his passion for riding, outlined his and the band’s musical careers, and much more. He also shared information on the band’s progress on their much-awaited new album during several parts of the conversation. The Iowan natives ended their decades-long contract with Roadrunner Records in 2022 with “The End, So Far,” freeing them to explore their future as they saw fit.
Since then, the group reportedly sold a substantial portion of its publishing and royalties for $120 million. Since this new performance will be the band’s first since welcoming former Sepultura drummer Eloy Casagrande back in 2024, fans have been especially curious to hear what the band has been working on lately. In this conversation, Root disclosed that some fifty arrangements have already been developed for the upcoming album, and that the early sessions have been centred around different musicians jamming together naturally. Additionally, he announced that the project will be directed by seasoned producer Matt Wallace (Faith No More, Mushroomhead).
This new album we’re working on, that’s what we’re doing, we’re just jamming and Clown‘s [M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan, percussionist] arranging, and he’s taking things that Eloy [Casagrande, drummer] and I are playing, or me and Eloy and Pfaff [Michael “Tortilla Man” Pfaff, percussionist, vocalist, etc.] are playing, or he’s even sitting in on the jams. And we’ll jam for like an hour and a half, two hours, and we might get four song ideas out of that and then we just spend time arranging, and it’s so organic and it’s so real. It’s it’s almost frightening.
Like I’ve done interviews in the past where I’ve talked about how I’ve never, as long as I’ve been writing — and writing is a learning curve, you’re always learning. There’s no handbook. There’s no writing music 101. There’s no… everybody does it differently.
For the first time, I’m listening to some of these arrangements as they’re growing. And this is the closest I’ve heard to the music that I can hear in my head that I can’t get out that I’ve ever been. And it’s exciting. And it’s like breathing a new life into wanting to create. And that’s really what… I mean, if I had it my way, I’d have a studio behind my house and I would spend every waking hour in that studio only taking breaks to jump into a RZR and rip through the desert to clear my head to come back and work at music again. You know what I mean?
There’s a new life with this stuff. And having Eloy helps, man. I mean, he’s such a talented human being and he lives, eats like the samurai, the master. He has that. He has that quality. He lives, eats, and breathes his drums. We’re playing shows. We just toured like two years straight. He’s got a practice pad off, you know, to the left behind his high hat. When we’re in-between songs and Corey‘s [Taylor, vocalist] talking, he literally turns to the side and he’s doing exercises. He’s just practicing, man. Keeping limber and he has very good discipline. He’s very knowledgeable. He’s very technical.
But he also is very… he can lay back and get, you know, experimental. Like even like Phil Collins Genesis experimental, and his range of like influences is so infinite. I’ll throw a drummer’s name on like Stewart Copeland or something like that and he’ll like, ‘Oh oh’, and he’ll try to like hit that mode. And there’s so many drummers that he looks up to that I I’m not even aware of. So I’m learning shit from him, too. So it’s really good.
Naturally, after the publication of “The End, So Far”, for their historic self-titled 1999 album, Slipknot embarked on a 25th anniversary run. Slipknot doesn’t seem to be prioritising recreating that era on their new record, even if that effort is regarded as a nu metal mainstay and the genre’s rebirth is still growing.
The new shit we’re writing does not sound like that at all. We’re not de-evolving into that sort of thing. There’s elements of it. I mean, we write how we write. So, we’re always going to have a little bit of a vibe, but you know, you’re not going to hear, for lack of a better term, a ‘nü-metal record’ out of us, if that makes any sense.
I don’t know that we’ve ever been nu metal. I think we just came out at a time when nü-metal was happening. So that’s where we got lumped, because when the new wave of American metal happened, they lumped us into that. When I would do guitar interviews with magazines and I’m like, wait a minute, ‘I thought we were a nü-metal?’ You know? But now we’re doing interviews with like Lamb Of God and bands like that, and I’m just like, ‘Okay, Whatever.’ And to me, I think we’re just Slipknot. We’re just Slipknot.
We have so many elements because everybody in the band comes from different musical backgrounds. There are those bands that go out and they kind of create their own thing where you can hear like maybe an influence here and there. But you know when you hear U2 there’s not really any other band to sound like U2 unless they’re emulating U2‘s early career, you know what I mean? But they evolved into something that that’s their own thing, that’s what they do you know? I suppose you could probably put Muse in that category.
Although, I do hear a lot of Queen influence in some of the stuff that Bellamy is doing and the way he writes and approaches music, but, you know, there are bands that are uncategorizable. And I think nü-metal, I don’t know if it’s whether I think or I hope nü-metal, I don’t know what the right word is, I hope, or I think, and or both, that is what Slipknot is. Even talking about that with the producer we’re working with. We’re working with Matt Wallace right now to write this stuff, and there’s times where we just kind of sit back and we’re listening to what I just worked on and, it’s just like, I’m just like, ‘Wow this is wild.’ This sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Yet there’s a familiarity to it that feels like I’ve been listening to it my whole life and it’s just so organic. It’s just Slipknot music.
So, what’s the direction then?
I mean, you know, it’s Slipknot, so we’re going to have a sound. But at the same time, having Eloy in the band is like such an honor to be able to jam with that guy. And the way we’re approaching this. Like, yeah, I can sit at my computer and I can throw some drum loops up and start writing riffs and layer it, you know, and that’s great. And then I can give it to the band and Corey can put lyrics on it and all that kind of stuff. And you know, it has its place.
But the way we’re approaching this, which is similar to the way it was being approached in the beginning, is like a garage band sort of vibe. Like now we’re going to a church, we’re setting up Eloy, I’m setting up, you know, a guitar rig, and we’re just jamming for like two hours. And then out of those two hours, we’ll go back, and as we’re playing, like Clown will be in the room, he’s got headphones on, and he might start jamming with us, or he might just be listening to what we’re doing. And he’ll throw his arm up, or he’ll hit the light, and that’s a a cue to our producer like, that’s a part, you know what I mean?
In his mind he’s thinking that’s a chorus, that’s an intro, that’s a verse line, that’s a bridge — whatever part it may be. But then he’ll look at us and he’ll be like, ‘Stick with that.’ Or he’ll be like, ‘That was cool. Move on.’ You know what I mean? Like go somewhere else with that. You know what I mean? And so what we’ve been able to do is do these jams and then we’ll take a break. Clown will go in and I’ll sit with Clown and Matt, our producer, and he’ll just start arranging a song out of it all, out of just off the top of our head jams.
And it’s so organic and so honest, and it’s so open to interpretation. I couldn’t tell you what the direction of this next record is going to be. I know I’m writing some of the fastest like grindpicking riffs, some of the most melodic, like heavy, like doomy kind of riffs. A lot of like really pretty, you know just beautiful like clean interludes and things like that that are finding their way into these songs. A lot of just experimental — I don’t want to say Pink Floyd — but maybe somewhere in that in that wheelhouse.
It looks like there’s plenty of material, though.
But we have so much material. Probably at least 50 like arrangements. I’m not saying they’re all full songs and they all need work. We’re all trying to leapfrog, go sort of back to the ‘We Are Not Your Kind‘ process where [we] start working on something, getting it to a level, shelving it, working on something else, coming back to it, going, ‘Okay, now let’s take this to another level,’ and sort of doing that leapfrog where we can let everything evolve and hopefully one point get to where it’s like, ‘I don’t know if we can let these evolve.’ Sort of like making a movie. A lot of directors say they don’t finish making movie. They just abandon the project.”
The release date for Slipknot‘s next masterpiece has not yet been announced, but based on the early phases, it seems reasonable to believe that it will happen at least in 2027. Let’s wait some more…
