SLIPKNOT's SHAWN 'CLOWN' CRAHAN Says Unreleased 'Look Outside Your Window' Album Could Arrive This Year

SLIPKNOT percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan has once again said that plans are still afoot to put out a set of 11 previously unreleased songs recorded by four members of the band during the sessions for its 2008 LP "All Hope Is Gone".

Crahan revealed the existence of the music in 2018, saying that he, singer Corey Taylor, guitarist Jim Root and DJ Sid Wilson wrote and laid down the more psychedelic-flavored tunes at a separate studio during an impasse in the recording of "All Hope Is Gone".

While speaking to Upset magazine, Crahan stated about plans to issue the unreleased material, tentatively titled "Look Outside Your Window": "It's an amazing body of work. You will never hear another Corey Taylor like this. The music and the words… it's one of the best things I've ever done in my life."

Crahan went on to say that he wants to make sure the project gets its own time to shine rather than being a half-hearted release.

"We wouldn't want SLIPKNOT to hurt 'Look Outside Your Window', and we wouldn't want 'Look Outside Your Window' to be a little irritation to SLIPKNOT. Why? Because it's beautiful God art and people deserve it. The good news is that six months from now, April Fool's Day 2023, we're off the label. There are no plans to immediately release something, and we haven't talked about it, but I would imagine it'll probably come very soon afterwards. There's nothing else to do, and it's ready to go. It'll be worth the wait."

Crahan previously spoke about "Look Outside Your Window" in an April 2021 interview with Knotfest.com. He said: "The reason why we never can commit to a date or anything is because — don't make it confusing. Don't make it something it's not. Don't call it something it's not. Accept it. It's music. It's art. It doesn't carry the SLIPKNOT name. Joey [Jordison, then-SLIPKNOT drummer] wasn't up the hill playing drums. He doesn't know anything about the songs. I think he's only been to the house once or twice. It's a completely different project. It was never held to piss people off. It was never held to prove a point.

"It's been mixed. It's been mastered. It's ready to go," he revealed. "We wanna put it out. But it's only gonna be put out when the priority is created correctly. It's up to everyone to sort of shut their mouths and not make it confusing. Don't let it affect SLIPKNOT. That's the priority — SLIPKNOT, SLIPKNOT, SLIPKNOT, SLIPKNOT. Everything else is just beautiful things that branch off of it. Everyone, quit confusing it. Accept it. We are an anomaly. We're too much. We're everything and anything at the same time and no time at all."

Regarding when the project might finally see the light of day, Crahan said: "It was created because we wanted to create art, and we did, and it ended up being something that everybody's gonna want, and they're gonna get it when it's right. Like we should think about having babies — only do it when we know we can be good mothers and fathers, when we know we're not gonna walk away from each other, when we know we're gonna be there for a reward for the child and give all of ourselves. That's the way we tried to do it, and we did — we tried to get it out.

"The reason why I'm holding out is because it's absolutely beautiful — I'm very proud of it; I'm so proud of everybody in it — and it just needs to be represented correctly," he added. "It needs not affect anybody negative. Nobody should be affected by it in any negative way; I won't allow it. And if it means people are going to, it will never see the light of day. 'Cause people make things confusing, and I won't allow it. Because when you grow older, you become wiser."

One of the songs from "Look Outside Your Window", "'Til We Die", surfaced on the digipak of "All Hope Is Gone", but the rest have not been made available anywhere.

In 2019, Taylor described the material on "Look Outside Your Window" to SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk" as "experimental," "super vibey" and "super melodic." He added: "There's something about those songs. They're very solemn, very energetic, very artistic. For people who are used to a certain way of SLIPKNOT sounding, this doesn't sound anything like that. It's much more of a rock vibe. Honestly, it's much more of a RADIOHEAD vibe, to be honest."

According to Taylor, the music that was recorded for "Look Outside Your Window" was originally supposed to be released simultaneously with the "All Hope Is Gone" tracks, but the plan never quite came together.

"Man, I tried like hell to make those two worlds come together — 'All Hope Is Gone' and 'Look Outside Your Window' — to the point where I was taking songs from both and kind of putting them together, like arrangement, sequencing," Corey told "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk". "I had two different versions of 'All Hope Is Gone' that I had put together with songs from that. And just honestly, because of the emotional rifts that were in the band, the turmoil that was going on, nobody wanted to try and make that work. So what we ended up with was 'All Hope Is Gone' and then this unreleased album, which we've been trying to find a way to release this for a really long time."

SLIPKNOT's latest album, "The End, So Far", arrived in September.