Good news! You might not have to wait as long as you think you do for a new Slipknot record. According to Slipknot guitarist Jim Root in an interview with the Turning Wrenches podcast, Slipknot toured hard after recruiting new drummer Eloy Casagrande to "show people why Eloy is part of Slipknot." But now that everyone gets it – which isn't surprising considering how good Casagrande is – it's time to work on a new record. Preferably not on the road.
"It's really hard for me personally to be creative when you know you have a tour looming over your shoulder. I need to know that I've got some time off so that I can, like… This is my desk behind here. I've got my reference monitors and the computer I record on. And I need time just to sit here and come up with ideas and layer and make arrangements that I can send off to Corey and Clown and all that stuff. So, after this European run — I told our manager, I'm, like, 'Stop booking tours, dude. Stop it.' I get it. It's Slipknot, so there's always offers coming in. And it's hard to say no, because there's guys in the band that in some ways… We always love playing shows, love playing live shows, but there's some guys in the band, some of the newer guys, that they need the money 'cause they're family guys and they have families.
"And they're hired members of the band, and we don't wanna have to have them go back to work when we get off tour. We wanna be able to make enough money that we can still pay them so that we can work on music and get them out to the studio that Clown likes to use and just be creative and work. And you can't do that unless you have revenue to do that. But 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. We need to get Eloy in a room and start jamming and getting creative and get all the rest of the guys in the band and start riffing out and then building them into songs. Plus I need the time for myself just to sit here at this desk and be creative. And it's coming back."
Root continued: "I know I saw a little bit of a viral post about me. The press always takes your shit out of context, and it was, like, 'Don't expect the record anytime soon,' type of thing. And that was done a few months ago [last December] on the last tour when I was [in London at the end of Slipknot's fall 2024 European tour and] very tour weary. Well, that's not the case anymore. I've got, like, six new arrangements that I think are worthy of giving to the rest of the guys. I won't give the guys stuff that I don't think is worthy of being on a Slipknot record and there's enough room there that everybody can put their input on and we can take it to that level.
"And right now I'm looking at six [songs] and I have four more that I'm working on. And I'd like to have 20 or 25 before we actually start doing pre-production and rewriting and rearranging and Corey putting lyrics on everything. So, no tours coming up. It's probably gonna be a while before we do another U.S. run or a European run. The last thing we did was — we did South America and Mexico, and then we did Australia and New Zealand. And that kind of kicked my ass a little bit. It took me almost about a month to recover from that — my sleep. Just the jet lag. You cross the international dateline, so you get home before you left, and it's 30 hours of being in the air and traveling."
Root later added that he'd like to get some new music out into the world before hitting everyone with a full-length, mostly just to tide fans over. So here's hoping that happens sometime in 2025, right? In the meantime, Slipknot has the following festival dates coming up.
6/4 Sölvesborg, Sweden Sweden Rock
6/6 Nuremberg, Germany Rock im Park
6/7 Nürburg, Germany Rock Am Ring
6/8 Nancy, France Heavy Weekend
6/10 Hannover, Germany Expo Plaza
6/12 Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic Rock for People
6/13 Nickelsdorf, Austria Novarock
6/14 Interlaken, Switzerland Greenfield
6/17 Ferrara, Italy Ferrara Summer Festival
6/19 Frankfurt, Germany Festhalle Messe Frankfurt
6/20 Dessel, Belgium Graspop Metal Meeting
6/21 Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhell
6/23 Berlin, Germany Waldbühne
6/25 Lyon, France LDLC Arena
6/26 Barcelona, Spain Rock Fest Barcelona
6/28 Viveiro, Spain Resurrectionfest
6/29 Lisbon, Portugal Evil Live Festival
7/19 Mansfield, OH Inkcarceration Festival
