THE BEAST

Corey Taylor has said that SLIPKNOT fans should be should be expecting something "fucking dangerous" on the band's next album.

The new SLIPKNOT disc is tentatively due out in 2019 and will follow up 2014's ".5: The Gray Chapter".

"It's only in the demo stages right now," Taylor told Kerrang! magazine. "However, we have very serious, tentative plans — and I say that because the best way to make God laugh is to announce your plans out loud — to go into the studio at the beginning of next year and get this fucker going. We have 16 songs written right now, and they are fucking dangerous.

"I loved '.5', but this album, to me, makes '.5' look like nobody's business," he continued. "This is 'Iowa' levels of heavy. And I have to go out and tour this shit at my age — I can feel those songs in my back! I am really, really excited about it, and I talk to the guys in SLIPKNOT all the time. I talk to Clown either every day, or every other day. I've been talking to Jim, V-man, Jay, Mick, Craig, Chris, Sid. We're all really, really, really excited about this stuff, and it's coming together really fucking well. So be prepared for 2019 — which, weirdly, is the 20th anniversary of our first album. Shit's about to get fucking real again! So take that as you will."

Taylor recently told Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio program that the lyrics he's writing for the next SLIPKNOT LP are perhaps his most personal yet. The singer, who separated from his wife more than a year ago and has since gone public with a new relationship, said: "It's been a heavy couple of years for me personally. So I'm working out some things, personally for myself, which has been great. I've been able to kind of grab hold of some of the depression that I've been fighting and kind of formulate the way that I want to describe it. So some of these lyrics are, to me, some of the best I've ever written. It's probably the most I've shared in years."

Taylor added that the reaction from the other members of SLIPKNOT to the lyrics has been "fantastic," saying, "I know Clown was, like, just blown away by how open and raw it all felt. It felt like the old days."

Even though he's been on the road with STONE SOUR, Taylor said that "it's been great watching the process and getting involved with the process" of writing new SLIPKNOT songs, continuing, "Hearing the music that... everybody else in the band has been really working on, and being able to listen to it with fresh ears and come at it from different standpoints has been really fulfilling."

".5: The Gray Chapter" was released following a six-year hiatus during which founding SLIPKNOT bassist Paul Gray died and drummer Joey Jordison was dismissed.

".5: The Gray Chapter" sold around 132,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 1 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD arrived in stores in October 2014 via Roadrunner.

Gray died in 2010 from a drug overdose, while Jordison was let go in December 2013, just before SLIPKNOT began recording the last album.