Corey Taylor of Slipknot recently sat down withRevolver Magto discuss their new album.5 The Gray Chapter,how the band were able to move forward withoutPaul and Joeyand when they knew it was time to write a new record..5 The Gray Chapter is available on October 17!
REVOLVER The first time Slipknot was featured on the cover of Revolver was back in 2001, whenIowawas released. Is it weird to think about how your young fans from those days are in their 30s now?
COREY TAYLORYeah, its weird. Were looking at another generation of fans. And the crazy thing is, with everything thats happened between All Hope Is Gone and now, its been six years since weve released any new music. So theres almost like a whole new group of people who have come of age without any new Slipknot musicall theyve heard is the legend, all they know is the old stuff. Its almost like were going back to basics and starting from street-level up. And its cool! One of the reasons were so excited about the album is because, to us, it feels like starting over in a lot of ways, for better or worse. And I think were doing it the right way.
Well, making a record without Paul and Joeyiskind of like starting over, isnt it? Those guys made a major contribution to Slipknots music.
Yeah. We knew it was going to be hard, and thats one of the reasons why we took our time coming back to it. Obviously without Paul, and with us splitting ways with Joey, it made it a little harder. But with this band, its never been an issue of, We cant do itits always been an issue of Howcan we do it?Howdo we do this? So when something like that happened, we just kind of filled in the blanks for ourselves. We made sure that everything we did made sense, and that we were doing it for the right reasons. And we went for the music just from the standpoint of, if you want to do it, youve got to find a way to do it. The thing that we realized right away was, Its not going to be the sameso lets not try and make it the same. Lets just go for what our heart feels. And once we figured that out, man, the music came really quickly; within two months, we had the basic template of what the album would be, and all that was left was to hammer out the details, which is always the best part, anyway. So yeah, it was a really good experience, man.
After Paul passed, was there ever a point where you thought, Thats it, Slipknots done, were never going to make another record?
Um, it was definitely on my mind. There was definitely a point where I was like, What do we do now? What does it mean? And there were some dark days at that point, just trying to figure out what the hell was going on. But I dont think there was ever a point where we all felt like, This is itif anything, it made us feel like, Whatdowe do now? And I think going out on those Sonisphere shows helped. Those first Sonisphere shows showed us that its just as important for us to continue as it is for the fans, for whatever reason. Everybodys got a different reason for being here, for being in this band and for continuing it. I think once we did that, we realized, We still have our legs underneath us, we still love doing it, and we still want to do it. After that, it was like, Lets give it a little time, and let the time for us to come back and make a record come to us naturally.
Did that sense of perspective come from Pauls passing?
Well, yeah. That hit us like a ton of bricks, you know? That was probably one of the hardest days that I ever had, if notthehardest day. A lot changed that day for us, you know? Some people went one way, others went another, as far as their lives, their approach towards life, and everything. We kind of looked at each other and went, None of us is getting younger. Were the only people that know our history, that know what we did together. And in a lot of ways, it seemed like we were kind of taking each other for granted. So one of the positive things that came out of that, if you can find a positive thing, is that it made us realize that were all weve got, and we needed to get a little closer. And I think we did on this.
Check out the rest of the interview at Revolver
