COREY TAYLOR: Why Now Is The Right Time For Me To Release My Debut Solo Album

SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor was a guest on the latest episode of "The Electric Theater With Clown" Internet show hosted by his SLIPKNOT bandmate M. Shawn "Clown" Crahan. You can now listen to the entire chat below.

Speaking about the inspiration for his upcoming debut solo album, "CMFT", Corey said: "This is something that I could have done years ago, I could have done at any other point, but at the time, it didn't make sense to do something like that. Honestly, because I had SLIPKNOT, I had STONE SOUR, for whatever it was worth.

"You know me — the only time I really like to put a focus on myself sometimes is when it's part of the collective, when it's working on something as a group and working on something as a band and working on something that we're gonna be able to hoist up and show to the world."

He continued: "For me, I was absolutely content with bouncing back and forth between SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR, but for the last few years, I've recognized something in myself that really was just getting more and more important for me to show and share, and that was a certain type of music — that kind of all-out rock and roll kind of positive… I don't even wanna say positive, 'cause it's not the right word. There's no real word for what I'm trying to say, so I'll just describe it — this major-chord, big-chorus kind of party vibe, for lack of a better term. And I felt like I didn't have that in my life. It was a reflection of the music that I've been into for many years. It was a reflection of the music that I usually like to do in the cover shows that I do here and there. It was a reflection of the songs that I had been writing over the years that didn't fit with either SLIPKNOT or STONE SOUR.

"It was weird — it was like I was trying to fill in an empty space in that artistic spot in my heart, and I knew that, obviously, there was no way it was gonna fit with SLIPKNOT, because it's just such a different entity. We play in different realms, and our world is huge, but these songs just don't fit — it's not the same kind of artistic flavor. I may have been able to do it with STONE SOUR, but STONE SOUR is so different than what it used to be that I had to just kind of create this third thing that, for lack of a better term, had to be a solo thing. 'Cause if I'd started a third band, it really wouldn't have made any sense. It just made more sense for me, especially at this point in my life, to be, like, 'Okay, I've written all these songs. I did this. The focus is gonna be on me regardless. Even if I put the band together and I do this thing from a band perspective, the focus is gonna be on me. The production is gonna come from my head. Artistically, these are the way the songs, I wanna hear them done.' And I just knew that all of the work was gonna be on me anyway. So it was just a matter of, 'Okay, if I'm gonna carry the load, then it's just gonna be my name, it's just gonna be me.' I'll have friends come in and play with me, but for the most part, it's my project. It's me — it's what I need to do. And the more I was thinking about it, the more I realized that my heart needed it.'

Taylor added: "You know how when you and I are working on pieces of music together that may or may not work with the 'KNOT sometimes, and they become other things that we really try to kind of put out into the world to make sure that they see the light of day, because we wanna share them with people. That's kind of what these songs were. These songs were parts of me that I really wanted to share the world and kind of show the world this other side of my writing style that I'd never been able to show before. So I don't know if it was necessarily a need for me to kind of go out and be solo, but it was definitely one of those things where it was, like, if I do this, I know I'm gonna do all the work. I've already written all the songs. I know the focus is all gonna be on me. There's no reason for me to start another band. At this point, it's gonna be the Corey Taylor show regardless, so I might as well just kind of take the helm and embrace it. It was really as simple as that. It really wasn't because I necessarily needed to be out front more, 'cause I'm out front anyway — with both bands. I've got that more. I've done the work, just as much as anybody else, and I was fine with it. So it really kind of came down to the definition of what the project needed to be, honestly, for it to be taken seriously. And it came down to just me embracing the fact that it was gonna be a solo project."

"CMFT" will be released on October 2 via Roadrunner Records. Taylor recorded the solo effort with his band consisting of Jason Christopher on bass, Dustin Schoenhofer on drums, and Zach Throne and Christian Martucci (STONE SOUR) on guitar. The LP was completed at Kevin Churko's The Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas with producer Jay Ruston, who has previously worked with ANTHRAX, STEEL PANTHER and STONE SOUR, among others.

The first two singles from the effort, "CMFT Must Be Stopped" and "Black Eyes Blue", were released last month and are available on all streaming platforms now. "CMFT Must Be Stopped" is joined by a Djay Brawner-directed music video, which sees Taylor taking the CMFT championship belt as friends such as Marilyn Manson, Lars Ulrich, Rob Halford, Chris Jericho, ZillaKami and more making cameos.

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.