SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor has confirmed to Matt Pinfield of 95.5 KLOS‘s “New & Approved” series that he and his bandmates have commenced work on the follow-up to 2019’s “We Are Not Your Kind” album. He said (see video below): “We’ve compiled a lot of material. Me and Clown [percussionist Shawn Crahan] have talked about something really, really cool, if we can pull it off. There’s a chance that it could be conceptual — if we can really do it right. I mean, the music is brilliant. It expands on what we did with ‘We Are Not Your Kind’ — it kind of blossoms from there — but the great thing is, it’s got not only that, but it’s got everything that you would want from a SLIPKNOT project; there’s the heavy stuff, there’s the dark stuff, there’s the melodic stuff, there’s the weird stuff. We have so many different flavors that we can play with that, now, at this point, it’s just us kind of mixing and matching and seeing what excites us.”
He continued: “That’s all I can say for right now. But I can tell you that it’s really, really good, man. We’re entering a realm that we’ve never been, and that, to us, is exciting. Especially after all of these years, we pride ourselves on always being able to try and top ourselves, and if we can pull this off, this may be the ultimate ‘top ourselves.'”
Taylor‘s latest comments come four months after he told “Good Company” that SLIPKNOT is “thinking about putting another album out maybe [in 2021]. But I don’t know. I don’t know what the plan is yet. But I know that we were talking about doing it, ’cause we only have one album left on our contract [with our record label].”
In October, Crahan confirmed that the band has been using some of the downtime during the coronavirus crisis to work on new material.
“We Are Not Your Kind” came out in August 2019. The disc sold 118,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Furthermore, the album made an impact worldwide with No. 1 debuts in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Australia, Canada, Japan, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and Finland, as well as Top 5 debuts in Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain and New Zealand.
“We Are Not Your Kind”‘s sales in the U.S. were boosted by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with SLIPKNOT‘s summer 2019 tour.
In early 2020, Crahan said that a set of 11 previously unreleased songs recorded by four members of SLIPKNOT during the sessions for its 2008 LP “All Hope Is Gone” will arrive at some point during the “We Are Not Your Kind” touring cycle.
Crahan revealed the existence of the music in 2018, saying that he, Taylor, guitarist Jim Root and DJ Sid Wilson wrote and laid down the more psychedelic-flavored tunes at a separate studio during an impasse in the recording of “All Hope Is Gone”.
