I understand that All Hope Is Gone has been the most collaborative record the band has written. With that being said, is this the most self-realized record, is this the record that Slipknot was born to make?
As far as that statement goes, to be brutally honest with you, I feel just the opposite for this one. I feel like this record is a bridge into the future. I believe that the last record was a lot of rehabilitating our friendship and coming together, and some people realizing that there are all kinds of people in this band with something to say and something to do. We did get into a mindset for this record with everyone being allowed to be themselves. We have a saying that, “The pieces are only as good as a whole.” That means that you could be real selfish in this band, but it’s really the band that matters. Know your place, know what matters. Don’t try to set yourself apart and make yourself more important. Realize that Slipknot is an entity. Its nine guys making up a whole. In this band it’s getting more important to allow everyone their ability to bring something musical to the band, and I believe that that’s getting better. But I look towards the future where it’s going to be even more of allowing everyone what they have to get out and that’s the real trick in this band. It’s going to take time. We have been together ten years and we have only put out four records, and take a lot of time in between records. But we look at bands that started at the same time as us, and they’ll have seven records, and over half of them are crap! They just wanted to get off their whole fundamental idea of what they thought they had to get out, put it on their resume and have control. Slipknot has never been that way, we just want to put out art that we believe in, and if takes three years to do it…well, that’s a good problem to have. We have four distinct canvases that we have painted and they all belong to different realms. None of them are derivative or contrived of each other. That speaks a lot to me… that we just have sincerity in our music. The integrity is something that we hold and the art form. So I think that we are getting better in allowing ourselves to trust ourselves more. Everyone in the band is really pushing themselves to be the best that they can be. There were a lot of things with this album that were the worst case scenario, but every record has its fair share of problems, but you just overcome them and you move to the future.
Would you say thematically, the record isn’t just about fighting the demons within, but it kind of holds up a mirror saying that society is just a reflection of who we are?
That’s another reason why we take so long to do it, because we are a touring band. I have never made a dollar off of selling a record. I could care less about the record. Is it fun, do I like doing it, do I like the art, do I like recording? Yeah! That stuff is all great, but that’s not what I got in it for. I got in it for the living experience, the living experience is who am I in this society, where is my place? We tour for so long and we work so hard that after a tour cycle, we need to decompress. Just to remember who I am, and get back involved in my life and then after those six months, you start taking a good look around you, and the spiritual problems in this world, the political problems, the individual problems, and you take everything that you witnessed and everything that you experienced and the next thing you know, you’re writing a new record. You reach within to get to who you are at that point. You need to take that time to realize what you are.
