COREY TAYLOR Says Oldest Song On His Upcoming Debut Solo Album Was Written When He Was Still In High School

During an appearance earlier today (Wednesday, June 3) on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation", SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor spoke about his recently completed debut solo album. He said: "It's been a long time coming. It was something that people have been asking me to do for years, and it was something that I always kind of put off, because how greedy can somebody be? I already have two bands. What more do I want? But then it just kept coming up, and then I just kept thinking about it, like, what would a solo album sound like? And that's when I started really looking into my bag, and it was just, like, I've got all these songs that I've written that didn't fit with either band. And that's kind of what started this. I was gonna do this next year, but then, obviously, everything shut down, so it kind of afforded me the time to really go in and really concentrate on it and work with the people that I wanted to work with — friends of mine for 15-plus years; people who I've made music with or jammed with or played with that I knew exactly how it would sound with them on it. And we just did it right. Honestly, we all quarantined for two weeks, including the people in the studio that we worked at, and made sure that we had no contact with anybody else — no outside people — and we just all went in and did it together. And we did 25 songs in two and a half weeks. It was insane."

Asked how long the material for the solo album had been sitting around, the 46-year-old rocker said: "I'm always writing. And it's kind of all over the page sometimes. Sometimes it's a risky move with both bands that I'm willing to take, and then there's some times where it's just, like, 'You know what? I don't even know where this fits. This has got like a SWEET/SLADE vibe that doesn't really fit with either band.' I tried giving them to other bands, and some bands, it just didn't fit their vibe, and other bands, they're a little more just not into outside material. So I just have a surplus of songs, and it was just, like, 'All right, I guess I'm just gonna use it.'

"A lot of this stuff is as new as I've written it in the last year or so, and some of the stuff is as old as… I mean, the first song on the album is a song that I've been working on since I was in high school," he revealed. "It's a long, long, long time coming, and really maybe it was one of those things where it took years of working and honing my craft to have, I guess, the confidence to be able to complete that song. So, yeah, this is a long, long time of waiting and piecing it together, and it feel awesome."

As for whether fans can expect to see him hit the road in support of the solo album, Corey said: "Absolutely, man. We definitely wanna do some solo shows. Because everything is so tentative now — everybody is so scared to book anything yet [due to the coronavirus pandemic]. But if it comes down to it and people wanna take a chance and do a one-off or something, that's what we're kind of looking at right now. But, obviously, I still have commitments to SLIPKNOT when everything kind of finally lurches back into place, so this will, obviously, kind of be put on hold again until after all those commitments are done, and then I'm gonna go on a full-on solo tour and do everything I can to promote that again."

Taylor recorded the solo album with his solo band consisting of Jason Christopher on bass, Dustin Schoenhofer on drums, and Zach Throne and Christian Martucci (STONE SOUR) on guitar.

Corey previously told WhatCulture Music about the musical direction of his solo LP: "It's definitely going to be rock-based, but it's going to be rock meets so many different things. There will be harder-edged stuff, but there also will be big, expansive, huge, world-changing guitar songs that you're going to want to sing along to. That's just who I am, and I'm not going to fight who I am."

Taylor's solo album is tentatively scheduled to arrive in September.

SLIPKNOT recently canceled all of its previously announced summer 2020 tour dates, including the "Knotfest Roadshow", Knotfest UK and Knotfest At Sea, due to the coronavirus pandemic which is sweeping the globe.