M. SHAWN CRAHAN On Songwriting Process For SLIPKNOT's Next Album: 'Everyone Is Looking Forward To Getting Back At It'

In a new interview with NME, SLIPKNOT co-founder and percussionist M. Shawn Crahan (a.k.a. Clown) said that he is not currently working on material for the follow-up to the band's 2022 album "The End, So Far" and, despite reports, nor are any of the other members of SLIPKNOT.

"We're doing the biggest thing we can do right now, which is taking a much-needed break," he said. "We're taking some real human time [after touring extensively for most of 2024 and 2025]. "Everybody is writing all the time, but we have not got into a place to work on what's been written." Crahan went on to say that there are tentative plans to get together later this month but only if everyone is up for it. "It feels very positive and everyone is looking forward to getting back at it," he said.

Last October, SLIPKNOT drummer Eloy Casagrande told Ollie Winiberg of Drummer's Review about the band's songwriting process: "What I can tell you right now is that we are cooking, we are doing some new music, for sure. Yes, we are. Since I joined the band, we have been working on some new ideas. We keep exchanging guitar riffs, drum beats, so we are always doing something. We had also some jam sessions. So we have a lot of material right now. We just have to sit and put everything together, start jamming, and it's happening. It already happened. It's gonna happen in the future. So new material is coming, for sure."

Last May, SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root told the Turning Wrenches podcast that he and his bandmates "need to write a record." He added: "It's really hard for me personally to be creative when you know you have a tour looming over your shoulder. I need to know that I've got some time off so that I can, like… This is my desk [at my home studio] behind here. I've got my reference monitors and the computer I record on. And I need time just to sit here and come up with ideas and layer and make arrangements that I can send off to Corey [Taylor, SLIPKNOT singer] and Clown [SLIPKNOT percussionist] and all that stuff."

He continued: "I told our manager, I'm, like, 'Stop booking tours, dude. Stop it.' I get it. It's SLIPKNOT, so there's always offers coming in. And it's hard to say no, because there's guys in the band that in some ways… We always love playing shows, love playing live shows, but there's some guys in the band, some of the newer guys, that they need the money 'cause they're family guys and they have families. And they're hired members of the band, and we don't wanna have to have them go back to work when we get off tour. We wanna be able to make enough money that we can still pay them so that we can work on music and get them out to the studio that Clown likes to use and just be creative and work. And you can't do that unless you have revenue to do that. But I kind of put my foot down and was, like, 'We need to stop, man. We just need to stop.' 'Cause I wanna write a record, and we owe it to Eloy to write a record. We need to get Eloy in a room and start jamming and getting creative and get all the rest of the guys in the band and start riffing out and then building them into songs. Plus I need the time for myself just to sit here at this desk and be creative. And it's coming back."

Root added: "I know I saw a little bit of a viral post about me. The press always takes your shit out of context, and it was, like, 'Don't expect the record anytime soon,' type of thing. And that was done a few months ago [in December 2024] on the last tour when I was [in London at the end of SLIPKNOT's fall 2024 European tour and] very tour weary. Well, that's not the case anymore. I've got, like, six new arrangements that I think are worthy of giving to the rest of the guys. I won't give the guys stuff that I don't think is worthy of being on a SLIPKNOT record and there's enough room there that everybody can put their input on and we can take it to that level. And right now I'm looking at six [songs] and I have four more that I'm working on. And I'd like to have 20 or 25 before we actually start doing pre-production and rewriting and rearranging and Corey putting lyrics on everything."

Asked if there are plans for SLIPKNOT to release a new single in the coming months, Jim said: "Earlier I said I've got, like, six finished arrangements that so far nobody else has heard yet. They're about ready to go to Clown and Corey and then filter out into the rest of the band. I would really like to release something before we start working on a [full] record, 'cause it's gonna take us… I think we need to be able to take our time to write and do pre-production, and that's gonna take a while. So I would like to get something out sooner to kind of satisfy… I don't know if it would show a direction or not. It depends on what arrangement it is. But of these six [songs] that I have done now, I'm willing to throw those out to the rest of the guys and see if any of them grab their attention. And we could very easily, after we get back from Europe, get out to Clown's studio and then start working on one and put one out. I'd like to do one, two, maybe even three in the meantime, as long as that affords me the time to keep writing and still have 25 separate from those three that we could work on before.

"You always wanna have way more material than what you're gonna need because you might be working on something that you think is absolutely amazing, but then once you actually start recording it, it kind of loses the vibe," he explained. "And then there's always that one weird song that you don't think is great, and all of a sudden that turns into the song that's, like, 'Whoa. Where did this come from? This thing's a banger.' 'Devil In I' is one of those songs. I wrote that song and I thought it was really repetitive and I hated it, and it was just gonna be kind of a filler idea. And all of a sudden that's one that we always throw in live sets, and the record label wanted to make it a single. And I'm just, like, 'Really?' I'm, like, it's almost the same two riffs over and over again. Literally, as long as it took to play that song is as long as it took me to write the arrangement for it. So, I don't know. Things surprise you. So, yeah, it would be cool to throw something out there as sort of a single or whatever, or an EP."

Less than two years ago, SLIPKNOT revealed that a new song "Long May You Die" was recorded during some of the early sessions with Casagrande.

"The End, So Far" arrived in August 2022. It marked the band's the last full-length LP before the departure of both keyboardist Craig Jones, who left the group in June 2023, and drummer Jay Weinberg, who was replaced by Casagrande.

Photo credit: Jonathan Weiner