Slipknot to Spend 'The Next Year' Writing New Music—In a New Way

Slipknot's 2014 album .5: The Gray Chapter ended the group's six-year break, but the members are already indicating there won't be as long of a hiatus for the next record.

Percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan spoke to Metal Insider about his new movie Officer Downe and shared that he and guitarist Jim Root will come together in February 2017 to begin creating new Slipknot material. They'll place a special focus on songwriting. He spoke at length about where he and his mask-wearing band members feel the act can do before they're ready to dive into the next record:

"We are not gonna sit around while everyone goes and does their thing, because everyone does their thing. Some people rest, some people do other bands, whatever. All of us feel, I am talking about everybody, Corey Taylor, Jim Root, we all feel that for the last 20 years we have been doing it one way, so it would be nice to just like examine the song. So we are going to get together in February and we are going to work with different people, different places, make experiences and take the opportunity to get back into a rehearsal room with a lot of us and jam and not feel like a lot of pressure like, 'Okay we have to get together and in three months write this album.' 

We want to spend the next year or so diving into the ability to write songs, and explore what we are to the world as musicians and songwriters. So we are very excited to be doing some things differently. We’ve got full support from the label and everybody around us, and we are going to dive into some very unique thinking, not unlike [sic] anything we have ever done."