Slipknot members: “Musically, we’ve never shied away from a challenge”
Slipknot just release their latest album ‘The End, So Far‘ on September 30th, 2022. Speaking to NME magazine via Zoom from their home in Las Vegas, the USA where the frontman is recording.
This new Slipknot album follows the 2019 album “We Are Not Your Kind.” This, however, indicated the departure of percussionist Chris Fehn, who was succeeded by Michael Pfaff.
We haven’t had to wait three years or less for a new album from “The Nine” since Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses). This suggests that a significant number of Maggots had not yet been born. So here it is, the follow-up to 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, which included three songs, including “The Chapeltown Rag,” “The Dying Song (Time to Sing),” and “Yen.”
Corey Taylor talked about deeply for Slipknot’s “The End, So Far” album:
“I haven’t said shit about it in fucking months. I’ve said what I’ve said, and I’ve got better things to talk about. Musically, we’ve never shied away from a challenge. It got to the point where you’re like, ‘Where do we go?’ Let’s look back for inspiration instead of trying to look forward, and let’s try to embrace some of the shit that made us wanna do this in the first place. Less about the cohesion of the album and more about the strength of the songs. Each song has its own identity, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the identity of the album.”
Then Taylor added:
“We have always been experimental. A f**king cystic embolism. Everybody just assumes that we’re heavy all the fucking time. We do have moments of blasts and brilliance, but at the same time, we have songs like ‘Circle’. We also have songs like ‘Snuff’ [brooding and clean from fourth album ‘All Hope Is Gone’]. When people hear [the new album], they go, ‘Well, that’s a departure.’ It’s like, ‘What are you, fucking new?’ We’ve spent 20-plus years throwing people for a loop.”
Slipknot’s album also closes with an acoustic slow-burner finale featuring Corey Taylor:
“Well, I’m sorry to say, that I have to stay. Because I like it here.
One of the problems about writing one of the heaviest fucking albums of all time is that people just expect you to do that over and over. Well, fuck, that’s so boring. If we had done that, we wouldn’t be where we are today, 100 per cent.”
This album is more about relating to people and less about purging again for me. And maybe that’s one of the reasons why the album feels as diverse and varied as it does as well is because there isn’t just one narrative, it’s several.
Oh, it’s quite easy. I have just as many dark periods as I do light periods. A fire, an anger, an energy that has never gone away. To this day, my anger can get away from me. I don’t do anything stupid like I used to when I was a kid. But I still have bursts of loud anger and I know that that can promote anxiety in people. I’ve really tried to use therapy and self-restraint to reign that in.”
“When we did ‘Iowa’, we hated each other. We are [SLIPKNOT] kind of reaching that point where we’ve kind of embraced each other for who we are. Avoid each other like the plague. The beautiful thing about Slipknot has also been one of the hardest things: we’re not necessarily people who would’ve been friends. We came from such different backgrounds, different points of view, and different musical standpoints. At certain times, that’s where the tension comes from, and that’s where the genius comes from.”
Commented about the latest Slipknot albums:
“You also have to remember a large part of the population are also people who have created petitions against every Batman that has ever been fucking cast in a movie, and they’ve always been wrong.
Who’s really right here? You fucking idiots, sometimes you just need to shut the fuck up and listen to what we give you. Bullshitted themselves into thinking that if they bitch enough that they’re gonna get what they want. That only happens with weak-minded people.”
Corey Taylor’s relationship with Joey:
“We all had such a complicated relationship with Joey at one point or another. He was a man who was tormented by his brilliance and his demons. And it made it hard to live with him sometimes. I’m not saying that to cut him down because we’ve all gone through it. It’s something that we as addicts, we as artists, we as really mentally fucked up people, have had to deal with.
When we lost Joey, it took away the chance for us to make peace with him. I know some of us had talked to him on the side. We never talked to him as a group, and I think that’s something that we all regret. It’s a hard thing to realize that you missed an opportunity.”
Slipknot – “The End, So Far” track list:
- Adderall
- The Dying Song (Time To Sing)
- The Chapeltown Rag
- Yen
- Hivemind
- Warranty
- Medicine For The Dead
- Acidic
- Heirloom
- H377
- De Sade
- Finale
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