Upon listening to the material that would make up the band’s new album The End, So Far, Slipknot guitarist Jim Root was taken aback by what he heard.
At one point during a recent interview with Guitar World, Jim is asked if he played a big part in creating this record. Here is what Root had to say:
“Mostly, I helped shape and structure songs in the studio. But I didn’t write and bring in stuff the way I did before. I was majorly involved in the writing from Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses. And then I got in a bit deeper on All Hope Is Gone.
“I wrote most of .5 The Gray Chapter and We Are Not Your Kind. But then the pandemic happened and nobody could be together. I was home alone and I got stressed out and depressed. So my contribution was minimal for this. It’s a good thing we had Alex stepping forward and picking up some of the slack along with [percussionist and artistic coordinator M. Shawn Crahan] Clown, who’s becoming a lot more involved in song arranging.”
The interviewer then asks Root if Alex’s ideas worked out and meshed well with Slipknot (with the band being a metal act). Jim replied:
“When I first heard a lot of the arrangements, I thought, ‘Oh fuck, this doesn’t sound like Slipknot to me. We’ve got a lot of work to do.’ I was kind of freaked out. What I heard was the symptom of having somebody that isn’t in our age group and wasn’t influenced by the same music.
“Alex was a Slipknot fan so he sounds like somebody that was influenced by Slipknot trying to write for Slipknot. But he had some good ideas, so we Frankensteined a couple of different parts between me, Alex and Clown, and things started to take shape. It was a huge group effort, but I was grateful Alex wrote the stuff he did because it taught me – not just about songwriting and arranging – but also about humanity, humility, ego and friendship.”
We personally think The End, So Far is a great record, and appreciate the more experimental elements of the album. Corey Taylor recently had something real blunt to say to those fans who have been complaining about the record.