Slipknot’s Corey Taylor Reveals Struggle ‘Finding Direction’ in How to Honor Paul Gray

It’s been a while since there’s been a new Slipknot album, but with good reason. The death of bassist and key creative member Paul Gray cast a large shadow over the band, who collectively had to come to terms with his passing before deciding to move forward with new music. With the band now set to release ’5: The Gray Chapter,’ their first new album since 2008, Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor reveals in a new interview with WAAF-FM host Mistress Carrie that taking the next step without Gray was not easy.

Taylor explains, “There was never a time where it felt like it was over, but there was definitely a time where we couldn’t find a direction and luckily we waited until it was the right time to do it.”

Even with the obvious that honoring Gray would be a big part of the new Slipknot album, there was a few struggles along the way, including what would be the “dedication” of the album to Gray. Taylor recalls, “Me and Clown were talking about … We just kind of got on the phone together, and it was, like, ‘Look, what do you think?’ And we went back and forth a handful of times until we both kind of hit on the title. And we both sat back and we were, like, ‘That’s it. That feels really, really good.’ ‘Cause we knew there was gonna be a dedication to Paul there. We didn’t know how to do it, we didn’t have the exact wording until we both kind of sat down and shot it back and forth and really got to the point where we knew we had the title.”

The vocalist says that even though there was the idea that several songs would be about Gray, approaching them meant addressing the feelings caused by his death from an accidental overdose. “I knew that in order to tell this correctly, we were gonna have to come at it from a very emotional point of view, and that meant facing some of the emotions that we had dealt with over the last four years, whether it was guilt, anger, because there is a natural progression that happens before you kind of reach that point of acceptance. And there’s nobody really there to coach you through it,” says Taylor.

The vocalist reveals that he shared what he was writing with his bandmates and had individual discussions that influenced the lyrical content. Fans will soon get a chance to hear the end result as the band’s new album, ‘.5: The Gray Chapter,’ is due on Oct. 21, and is available for pre-order at Amazon or iTunes.