Slipknot are recording. Jim Root has been posting from the sessions, using the hashtag “#newrecord” and sharing studio activity to his Instagram story, indicating that tracking for the band’s eighth album is under way.
There has been no formal announcement, and no title, label or release date has been given.
The band’s position was set out in July, when Root appeared on the “Ride BYND” podcast and revealed both the volume of material and who is overseeing it.
“We have so, so, so, so much material — probably at least 50, like, arrangements,” he said. “I’m not saying they’re all full songs, and they all need work.”
The producer is Matt Wallace, whose credits include Faith No More‘s The Real Thing and Angel Dust, The Replacements‘ Don’t Tell A Soul and Maroon 5‘s Songs About Jane.
Root described a process built on jamming rather than demos.
“We’ll jam for like an hour and a half, two hours,” he said, “and we might get four song ideas out of that and then we just spend time arranging, and it’s so organic and it’s so real. It’s almost frightening.”
Shawn Crahan is handling the arrangements. “This new album we’re working on, that’s what we’re doing, we’re just jamming and Clown‘s arranging,” Root said.
He was unusually direct about how it is turning out.
“We’re working with Matt Wallace right now to write this stuff and there’s times where we just kind of sit back and we’re listening to what I just worked on and I’m just like, ‘Wow this is wild. This sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before.’ Yet there’s a familiarity to it that feels like I’ve been listening to it my whole life and it’s just so organic. It’s just Slipknot music.”
“This is the closest I’ve heard to the music that I can hear in my head that I can’t get out that I’ve ever been,” he added. “And it’s exciting. And it’s like breathing a new life into wanting to create.”
Root has said the writing only started because he insisted the band come off the road.
“Once we got Eloy in the band, we needed to get out there and get in front of people and show people why Eloy is part of Slipknot,” he said, before telling their manager to stop taking bookings. “I kind of put my foot down and was, like, ‘We need to stop, man. We just need to stop.’ ‘Cause I wanna write a record, and we owe it to Eloy to write a record.”
Asked about the revival of nu metal among younger listeners, Root said the band are not heading that way.
“That happens, man. That’s like fashion, that’s like movies. Everything has a cycle. Things come in and out of cycle… Which is wild, ’cause the new s**t we’re [Slipknot] writing does not sound like that at all. We’re not digressing or de-evolving into that sort of a… There’s elements of it.”
He described the approach instead as closer to how the band started. “It’s Slipknot, so we’re going to have a sound. But at the same time, having Eloy in the band is like such an honor to be able to jam with that guy… But the way we’re approaching this, which is similar to the way it was being approached in the beginning, is like a garage band sort of vibe.”
The record will carry three changes at once.
It is the first Slipknot album with drummer Eloy Casagrande, who joined in February 2024. It is the first without turntablist Sid Wilson, whose departure the band confirmed on August 14 this year after 28 years. And it is the first since sampler Craig Jones left in 2023, with his replacement still not publicly identified.
Wilson has been seen working in the studio with rapper Rome Fortune since leaving.
Slipknot completed their contract with Roadrunner Records with The End, So Far in September 2022, and are currently unsigned. How the new album will be released has not been addressed.
Their most recent release was Look Outside Your Window, an album recorded in 2008 during the All Hope Is Gone sessions by Corey Taylor, Root, Crahan and Wilson, which finally appeared on Record Store Day in April under that name rather than as a Slipknot record.
