“I felt a bit rushed trying to come up with ideas”
Slipknot are nearing the finish line with their seventh studio album The End, So Far, out next Friday (September 30) via Roadrunner Records.
Produced by Slipknot and Joe Barresi, The End, So Far will feature 12 tracks, including 2021 single The Chapeltown Rag, and will be the follow-up to 2019’s widely acclaimed album, We Are Not Your Kind, which scored the third No. consecutive Slipknot on the Billboard 200.
A lot of people are clearly excited about the arrival of the new album, but the band’s guitarist, Jim Root, doesn’t seem quite so enthusiastic.
In a recent interview for MusicRadarhe said the coronavirus context had hampered the flow of his creative ideas: “With the state of mind that was mine during [la pandémie]I didn’t have many creative ideas. I felt a bit rushed trying to come up with ideas for the various arrangements. We didn’t rehearse as a band. We didn’t know the songs inside and out [quand nous les avons enregistrées]and it affected the disc. It made us fall behind. We weren’t really arguing or fighting, but trying to figure out, like, ‘What’s the best way to approach this or that problem in this context?’”
He continued: “You can plan all you want, but the big clock over your head and the label budget, all that stuff…there are so many factors that were against us during the making of this record that I’m surprised that we were able to finish it. And then it takes so long to release it compared to the time it took us to record it! I figure if it took that long to release it, we could have taken our time with pre-production and, in my opinion, released a better product. And that doesn’t mean we’re disappointed with what we’re releasing; this is just where we are [dans notre carrière]. That’s what we were able to do, given the circumstances, and the things we had to maneuver with.”
Drawing a parallel with cinema, he added: “It’s like the movies. Directors constantly say that they never finish a film, they abandon it! I feel like, more than anything with this record, we had to let it go and move on.”
Speaking about how the band failed to get the most out of their new producer, Joe Barresi (Tool, Parkway Drive, Chevelle, etc.), Root said: “He’s got an amazing track record, and I feel like we weren’t prepared for Joe Barresi. I feel like we couldn’t use Joe Barresi to his fullest, you know what I mean? We didn’t do any pre-production. Basically, we built this record on our own, and a lot of that was due to the coronavirus, and the fact that we were apart. Circumstances led us to make the record this way…”
Later in the interview, Root also explained that the band always wanted to expand their sound, without losing their identity. And knowing that The End, So Far marks the end of Slipknot’s contract with Roadrunner Records, it’s reasonable to assume that the band will experiment more and more musically in the years to come.
Also, just recently, Slipknot re-released all of their old music videos in high definition to keep their fans waiting, and singer Corey Taylor and Root revealed that they were planning to launch a new side project together.
Slipknot – Yen:
