SLIPKNOT's SHAWN CRAHAN Talks About The 'Thought Process' Behind Next Studio Album

SLIPKNOT co-founder/conceptualist/percussionist Shawn M. Crahan (a.k.a. Clown) recently spoke to Caller.com about the band's plans to enter the studio to begin recording the long-awaited follow-up to 2008's "All Hope is Gone". The forthcoming effort will mark SLIPKNOT's first release since the May 2010 death of bassist and key songwriting contributor Paul Gray.

"[Drummer Joey Jordison] has written 30 songs and recorded them," Crahan said. "That's how he's coping [with Paul's loss]. That's what he does. That's who he is. He's never going to stop thinking about SLIPKNOT or recording his ideas. About three weeks ago [or] four weeks ago, [singer] Corey [Taylor] showed me titles that he's thinking about for the next record. So he's starting that process … But the secret is, how can I predict the future or how we're going to feel when all of us are in a room together and we're dealing with what we're dealing with? I can't predict that. I don't know what that is. But I will tell you, the next record is a concept, and it's pretty obvious to think about. And it's a different evolvement than what we've done before. Each record has a thought process behind it, and this next one definitely has something very serious and unexpected, and that will be the motivation."

Taylor has been ambivalent about working on new material following Gray's death, although Crahan and Jordison have been much more confident about the band recording again.

SLIPKNOT last summer completed a three-week European tour that was the band's first run of dates since Gray's passing.

Taylor told Billboard.com that when SLIPKNOT does eventually make it back into the recording studio, "We know that everything we do on that album is going to be about Paul. It's going to be very melancholy. It's going to be a more saddened form of rage when it does happen, and it'll be a whole path that we've never gone down before." He added that he personally was "not as anxious to make a new album as maybe certain people in the band are, and I know a lot of the guys in the band feel the same way I do, whether they want to admit it or not. It just makes more sense to try and figure things out before we try to get into a studio... I don't want to risk losing what we've built because somebody's trying to prove a point."