Corey Taylor has shared his thoughts on his bandmate Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan saying that Slipknot could abandon making albums in favour of singles in the near future.

Speaking to NME, the percussionist, and Slipknot’s de facto creative director, said: ““I always thought, ‘What would it be like if Slipknot was big enough that we weren’t held to albums?’ Let’s say Clown could convince you, ‘Hey, instead of waiting two years for 12 songs, I’m gonna give you one song every month.’ So in reality, I’m shaving a year off for the same thing.”

“You have to go with me on this journey, but what I promise you is, there’s artwork that goes with it, there’s utility that goes with it, it’s cheaper than what a normal individual song would be… And it’s gone through all the filters – it’s gone through the band, it’s gone through Corey Taylor, it’s gone through a professional mixer and masterer – no avenues have been chopped up, it’s all business as usual. And we want to do this because I think it’s time for you, our fans, to get everything.”

Taylor was asked at a recent Monster-Mania Con Q&A session whether he was on the same page as Clown. He said, as transcribed by Blabbermouth.net, “It’s kind of difficult to get nine people on the same page anymore, especially we’re old and dicks. But the cool thing is that we all still get excited about good ideas. [Guitarists] Jim [Root] and Mick [Thomson] are so good at writing music. Me and Clown work really well coming up with stuff together, VMan [bassist Alessandro Venturella] is actually really good.

“So we’ve done so much in our career that at this point we could sit back and just do EPs. I mean, I’ve got a good idea for a double concept record with a whole storyline that goes along with it that I would love to do. But the cool thing is that we’ve kind of established our history, so whatever comes next will naturally be something that we want to do. So whether it’s go in and just blast out a couple psycho tunes and just have fun doing that or we go in and do a very elaborate plan, like a storyline or something, either way it’ll be something that we’re really into.”

He continued, “I back the group, you know? At this point, we’ve released so much music and we’re off our label now, so sky’s our limit; we can kind of do whatever we want. So whatever we do next will be something that we are all on the same page for, which is something you can’t always say.”

The Iowa metal band now have this option open to them because their contract with label Roadrunner will expire in March 2023, leaving them completely independent. Their title of their newest album ‘The End, So Far’, which was released in September, reflects this, as it is the last album The Nine were contractually obliged to release on the deal they signed back in 1998.

Meanwhile, the band’s drummer Jay Weinberg has opened up about his experiences of hearing loss for a new public service announcement for the Hearing Health Foundation (HHF). He explained he learned a “very quick lesson” in the importance of wearing hearing protection on stage when he began playing with other musicians.

“We had a great day jamming, but then the next morning I had no high-end frequencies in my hearing,” he recalled. “I thought I honestly lost my hearing altogether, and I was really frightened ’cause I didn’t know how to deal with that.”