Despite having “nearly zero inspiration”, Slipknot’s Jim Root has “six finished arrangements” for next album

Slipknot‘s Jim Root has said he has “six finished arrangements” for a new album – despite previously claiming that he has “nearly zero inspiration”.

• READ MORE: Clown talks Slipknot’s 25th anniversary tour and future: “We probably have several albums in us right now”

The guitarist recently appeared on the Turning Wrenches podcast, where he gave us a taste of the follow-up to Slipknot’s 2022 album ‘The End, So Far‘.

“I want to make a raw album,” he told the podcast (via Louder), adding: “I would like to revisit the raw energy of how those first two records were recorded and even into the ‘Vol. 3‘ record [from 2004]… There’s just something really stripped down and punk rock about it and I think we’ve been missing that on our past few records and I think it’s time to get back to that in some ways.”

Though Root went on to say he had “six finished arrangements” ready, he wouldn’t be releasing an album proper anytime soon: “I think we need to be able to take our time to write and do pre-production and that’s gonna take awhile.”

It follows previous remarks made by Root saying he had “nearly zero inspiration” for writing due to their intense touring schedule. He added that there was also material written before COVID that “I’m not interested in. I think everybody else in the band gets it too, and I think they’re kind of, like, ‘Okay, we need to maybe sweep all that shit under a rug and start fresh.’”

Slipknot’s follow-up record will be different from ‘Look Outside Your Window’, the long-awaited lost album from Slipknot. The album is expected to arrive sometime this year.

Slipknot’s Clown has recently teased that the record is “not even close” to the band’s usual style, adding: “It was never a Slipknot album. Not while it was happening, not while I’ve held onto it for 10 years, and certainly not fuckin’ when it comes out.”

So far, only one track from the album has been released: ‘All Hope Is Gone’ bonus track ‘Til We Die’.

Though the record has been slated for many years – including frontman Corey Taylor, Root and Clown all variously promising its release – Clown revealed to NME last December that the long-awaited LP was out of his hands and with management for the final steps.

“I’m really pleased about it and happy to finally be rid of it,” he told us. “What’s nice though is that it isn’t a hype thing, it’s just something we did while we were doing other Slipknot albums. It was a very honest action to make music that wasn’t Slipknot, but utilised the skills of guys with no rules.

“I don’t know if it’s ‘good’, but I know that I love it,” he continued. “I make music for myself, but I hope that the people who waited and waited and waited think it was worth it too.”

Elsewhere, Slipknot’s Corey Taylor teased a cover of Kendrick Lamar’s ‘TV Off’, saying: “That’s a dope fucking track”.

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