SLIPKNOT Bassist: 'I Could Definitely See Us Playing For A While Longer'

PureGrainAudio.com recently conducted an interview with SLIPKNOT bassist Paul Gray. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

PureGrainAudio.com: You recently wrapped up the "All Hope Is Gone" world tour that lasted an entire year. What are your reflections on the tour looking back?

Paul: I mean, it's actually been an awesome tour, man. Looking back now, it's kind of amazing that we did so well. I mean, we have the best fans in the world. With the way things are going now with the economy and everything like that, to come out and spend money to see a band is kind of hard to justify all the time, you know what I mean? We did well everywhere we played, man. We actually played the biggest shows we've ever done on this tour, so it's pretty amazing. We're kind of in awe, you know, we're totally just, what's the word I'm looking for... thankful and grateful to our fans for sticking by us. And, you know, just for being there for us, we're just grateful and thankful.

PureGrainAudio.com: I read that for "All Hope Is Gone", you wanted to make it SLIPKNOT's heaviest album to date. Looking back do you think you accomplished this goal?

Paul: Actually, I think it is our heaviest album, It's definitely got some balls to it. I don't think we necessarily decided to try to make it our heaviest album or whatever, I mean, it kind of turned out that way. The album before, "The Subliminal Verses", we kind of were experimenting with a lot of stuff. We did the same kind of thing in the studio this time, we went in there with a set group of songs that we had already worked on. I mean, we had like three studios going out there at the same time. We had the main tracking studio, but we had other rooms, if people had guitar riffs or whatever or drum parts, we had other places we could go and record. We just ended up with all this material you know so we just kind of tried to pick the best stuff that we had done. And we still have, there's probably a good ten songs that we haven't even touched that no one has even heard. But as far as the album being heavy, I definitely think it's probably our heaviest album by far. Production-wise, I think it sounds better than all the other albums and it was just a good time, man. You know, it's weird too; some of the riffs are riffs from old, old stuff, stuff that we had done like fifteen years ago and we're there kind of revamping it and it came out heavy. Definitely I don't think we set out to make it our heaviest record but I think it turned out to be.

PureGrainAudio.com: After the huge success of "Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses", you went on a bit of a hiatus before starting on "All Hope Is Gone". What did you personally do during the downtime in between albums and tours?

Paul: You know, I did a couple of things, I went on tour with a friend of mine's band, REGGIE AND THE FULL EFFECTS; it's totally nothing like SLIPKNOT, but it was definitely a lot of fun. They had a new album so they asked me if I would play bass on that and like, tour on that which we did, it was like a van tour, like a four-month van tour which I hadn't done in you know, since SLIPKNOT first started. It was pretty awesome, actually; it was a really good time. We were playing these cool, small clubs. I also wrote some stuff, TV and movie stuff, with a couple of other people. I have no idea if that stuff ever actually came out or got used or what. I guess you do it and then you sit and wait so hopefully some of that stuff will come out. And that's about it. I did a lot of hanging out with my wife. I got married recently so I spent a lot of time with her and you know, just kind of chilled out, man. You know, keep busy at home and definitely did some writing and that's about it.

PureGrainAudio.com: You of course are one of the founding members of SLIPKNOT going back to the mid-1990s. How does it feel to still be doing this almost fifteen years later? Do you see this continuing for many years to come?

Paul: You know what?! I know it's going to go for a while longer. I don't see us being like the freaking ROLLING STONES or some shit [laughs], but I could definitely see us playing for a while longer, definitely. As long as people are having fun and the thing about it is, we kind of have learned, as we've matured as band, we've kind of learned how to give each other their space and time. We'll take time now in between records, like the first couple of records we were like so, tour, then record, then tour and it was just like constant and it was a lot of pressure and it kind of made us sick of each other, that's why we did a break before "Subliminal". And then after "Subliminal" we did a break and we'll probably take a break after this one, let everyone do their own thing and it definitely makes it fun to come back.

Read the entire interview from PureGrainAudio.com.