Corey Taylor tells Billboard.com that "next year's going to be very, very busy" for STONE SOUR, which would seem to leave little time for the singer and guitarist Jim Root to focus on SLIPKNOT. But Taylor says that group will play four shows — including Ozzfest Japan on May 11 — while the recording process for a new SLIPKNOT album is probably at least a couple of years away.

"It's gonna be awhile yet," Taylor says. "We're throwing demos at each other. Once we all kind of see what the album could be, that`s when we'll go in. I think the worst thing that we could do as a band, and we're different from other bands, the worst thing that we could do is go right in and do something that feels forced, because the fans will see right through that, and we've never done that. So to me it makes more sense to kind of let the album come to us."

SLIPKNOT bassist Paul Gray died in May 2010 from an overdose of drugs — a devastating tragedy which brought the other members of the band closer together and helped them reconnect after they grew apart through years of touring and success.

"We had all stretched ourselves into different lives for the most part, and then we lost Paul," Taylor told DesMoinesRegister.com in August. "It was such a shock to us that it made us sit up and look at what we were doing with our lives and how we were toward each other. We were so close in the beginning, then for whatever reason we all drifted apart here and there.

"Losing someone like that, a great friend and an amazing brother — someone who is so important to the band in so many ways — you start to look at what you take for granted."

Gray made his final recorded appearance on SLIPKNOT's 2008 album, "All Hope Is Gone", which was certified platinum by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in August 2010 for shipments in excess of one million copes in the United States — the band's fourth consecutive full-length release to achieve the milestone.