JIM ROOT On Composing New SLIPKNOT Music: With 'Writing, There's No Rule Book'

In a new interview with Andertons Music Co, SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root was asked about his songwriting process and whether he is "a riff player" or someone who constructs songs with more of "a theoretical approach". He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I'm still trying to figure that out. I think that's the eternal [thing], because [with] writing, there's no rule book. You can do it however it comes to you, whether it's noodling around on the couch and then something comes to you or it's sitting in front of the Pro Tools rig or if it's at a band rehearsal and then the drummer plays something and then you just happen to play something along with it and somebody's, like, 'What was that?' And then it can evolve into a song.

"You hear a lot of people say a song will write itself, and sometimes that happens, and when it does happen, those tend to be the really good ones," Jim explained. "Or it could be a song that you just work on for years and it just stays in demo form and then you just keep revisiting it. And maybe a year after you started working on it, you hear it differently, and you're, like, 'Oh, wait a minute.' And then, all of a sudden, something unlocks and then it comes together better that way. That's why, I think, a lot of the times in the movie industry, they say they never finish a movie; they abandon it. And I think that rings true with what we do, too, in the studio. It's, like, how deep in do you wanna go, or can you go? And you could infinitely work on things until you're… you can drive yourself crazy and end up cutting your ear off or whatever, you know what I mean? It's hard… At some point you just stop.

"When we were working on [2019's] 'We Are Not Your Kind' [album], that was kind of the deepest we were able to go into a record," Root revealed. "I mean, I started working on that record a couple of years before we even got together to do pre-production for it. And we had so many songs that it got to the point where, sitting with Clown [percussionist Shawn Crahan] and [singer] Corey [Taylor] and [producer Greg] Fidelman, we were just trying to figure out, like, 'Which ones are we cutting?' 'Cause you know, the money's cutting off at this time and the studio time's cutting off at this time and there's a deadline and there's a schedule and there's a budget, and you've got these five extra songs that we need to figure out which ones we're focusing on. And it's, like, 'Jesus, how do we figure this out?'"

Asked if having less money and time in the studio inspires greater creativity or if he prefers the freedom to go longer while making new albums, Root said: "That's hard to say because we haven't had a chance to do either enough times to figure it out. It's, like, how many times are you gonna make a record in your life and in your career? You're playing shows constantly — you might do hundreds or thousands of shows — but you're only gonna be in a studio six or seven times in your career, ten times maybe, depending on how long your career is. Some people twice. So, that's one of those things where there's always gonna be a learning curve. But I think we work really well under pressure in some cases, in most cases. There are exceptions to that rule, of course, but I think if we know there's a clock ticking over our heads, it'll inspire us to really dig down in deep and find what it is we're looking for."

Root also talked about his songwriting and playing chemistry with fellow SLIPKNOT guitarist Mick Thomson. Asked if he feels it's his role to embellish what Mick's gonna play, Jim said: "It depends on the song, the writing process, whether it's something that I came up with at home, whether it's a band situation or whether it's one of those things where somebody hears something and then we start working on it off of that. But if I'm at home, and the only reason I'm talking about this is because it's what I'm most familiar with, I always write thinking about what not just Mick is gonna be doing, but what Clown or [percussionist Michael] Pfaff or any of the other guys are gonna be doing, and I always think about leaving space. The only question is, what's Corey gonna do? So if I write a four- or five-minute-long arrangement and I've got it set up so there's an intro and then there's a verse line and then a pre-chorus and a chorus and then a middle eight section or a breakdown and then it all repeats or whatever, I might give it to him and he might wanna sing a chorus over what I thought was a verse or he might take this little pre-chorus section and want that to be the verse. So I have to be real free with what I write so that I don't get married to how it is in my head. That way, I'll send it off to Corey first and see if it's… And sometimes he'll just write over what I give him and we won't change anything. And other times it's that evolution. And then, as far as guitar parts, like I'll always do a left and right guitar track. And even in the studio, Mick and I will do hard left and right tracks. But there might be songs where, if it happens to be a song that I wrote at home, he might wanna be, like, 'That rhythm's really cool, but I have this idea and I'm gonna play this.' And that's great 'cause it adds a whole another new dimension to the song that I wouldn't have thought of, which is great. When you become so attached to something and you're so in your head with it, you can't look at it objectively, but you give it to somebody like Mick and he hears it from a totally different standpoint and a different style of playing even, and he does something that wouldn't even occur to me. And then all of a sudden that's the thing that takes the song and lifts it to where it needs to be."

SLIPKNOT recently completed the North American portion of the "Here Comes The Pain" tour. This year the nine celebrated the 25th anniversary of their seminal debut album, "Slipknot", which catapulted the band back in 1999.

SLIPKNOT's 14-song set consisted of nothing but material from that LP, including two tracks which hadn't been performed in almost 25 years.

"Nothing you will hear tonight was written after 1999," Taylor has been telling the crowd at all the shows, which normally open with "(sic)", "Eyeless" and "Wait And Bleed", and include "No Life" and "Scissors", neither of which had been played live since 2000. Other rarely performed songs include "Get This" (played for the first time since 2019),"Me Inside" (first time since 2015) and "Only One" (2012).

As has been the case with all of SLIPKNOT's shows in 2024 so far, the band adopted a classic look, bringing back the 1999 red jumpsuits and elements of their early masks into their modern versions, tying into the fact that SLIPKNOT is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Produced by Live Nation, the "Here Comes The Pain" tour's highlights included Los Angeles's Intuit Dome, Austin's Moody Center and more with direct support from Kentucky's young and vibrant hardcore/metal forerunners KNOCKED LOOSE. ORBIT CULTURE and VENDED provided support on select dates.