JIM ROOT Says SLIPKNOT Has Never Made Money From Record Sales

In a brand new interview with The Morning Call, SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root spoke about the success of the band's latest album, ".5: The Gray Chapter", which sold approximately 132,000 copies in its first week of release to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album sales chart. It was SLIPKNOT's second straight chart-topper following its predecessor, "All Hope Is Gone", which moved 240,000 copies in its first week back in 2008.

"You don't even know are we going to have a career," Root told The Morning Call about the current state of the music industry. "Are we going to be able to sell records? Are we going to have a label? I mean, labels are [shutting down] all the time. It takes like pop and rap to keep these labels going because those are the only people that are buying records anymore

"To have a No. 1 with 130,000 copies sold is, you know, I remember when we first started selling records, in order to have a No. 1, you'd have to sell at least a half a million if not more, for the rock side of things," he said. "And now it's a fraction of that. So it kind of really shows you the state of where everything's at. I don't put too much into that anyway because we don't see a penny off of record sales and we never have. For us it's all about touring."

During the same interview, Root declined to name the musicians who are playing drums and bass on SLIPKNOT's current tour, despite the fact that their identities were revealed as Jay Weinberg and Alessandro "Vman" Venturella by a disgruntled former drumtech for SLIPKNOT who posted a picture of a backstage call sheet on Instagram.

"It's a little bit of a confusing part of our lives," Root said of the rhythm section situation. "I'm just going to say we have drummer X and bass player Y helping us out for the time being, and who knows what the future will hold?

"[Late SLIPKNOT bassist] Paul [Gray] was taken away from us, and that can never really be replaced. And we're not the type of band that will ever be like, we're not going to throw a mask that looks just like Paul's mask and slap a number 2 on their shoulder and say this is our new bass player.

"That's not how it works. They've got to try and find their way within our band, and as they do that, as it evolves, then we'll figure out what they should have on their sleeve, if anything. Right now, both of those guys have blank sleeves."