CLOWN 'Got Very Creative' On New SLIPKNOT Music During Pandemic

In the fourth of a six-part interview with Terry "Beez" Bezer of Knotfest.com's "Mosh Talks With Beez", SLIPKNOT percussionist and co-founder M. Shawn "Clown" Crahan discussed the progress of the songwriting sessions for the follow-up to 2019's "We Are Not Your Kind" album. Asked if any of the new music is done, Crahan said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Nothing is ever done. Why? Because nothing is ever done until everyone in the band has had their say. I like to back that. If it hasn't happened, no one grabbed me, I will fight for that. We merely do what we do in this life. Right now, the pandemic hit, and it made me creative. And if anybody's mad at me for being creative, I don't know what to say about it. But I know that we can use all of it, or none of it — I don't care either way. So I will let you know, maybe we will use all of it or none of it — either way, we don't need to make it confusing. But I will play it until [DJ] Sid Wilson has said what he wants to say, listened to every ounce, been able to take his time. I point him out, because he has not been one of the people yet to be here; that's gonna happen very soon, as I go into his location, and doing the same thing. I say him, because until he has heard everything, there could be a possibility, from A to Z, basically, to have his say and his due diligence to be 0, SLIPKNOT's guy, an O.G., Sid Wilson. I mean, come on. It's never done. So it gets confusing. Maybe you get to talk to me, but you don't get to talk to anyone else, so no one else gets to talk about it. So it gets confusing. So I wanna make it unconfusing."

He continued: "I got very creative. I created — how many [pieces of music]? I'm not gonna say. Because then the suits and all the stupid people, they wanna bug me. When I say 'stupid people,' I mean, they're actually very smart. Then, next thing you know, I'm in a mouse trap and I don't know what to do, and blah blah blah. But everybody just needs to know I'm in my basement, with my stuff, doing my thing, with my friends, the way we want to. There's no one telling us anything… And Corey Taylor [SLIPKNOT frontman] has gotten almost all of it and partaken on almost on all of it, which has made it a completely other sort of weird thing. But I'm going on record right now that we could be talking about one song."

Last October, Crahan confirmed that SLIPKNOT had 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".