Producer of New Slipknot Album Revealed, Jim Root Shares Other Details

For the first time since 2022, it appears that Slipknot are making headway on a new studio with guitarist Jim Root revealing the name of the producer they're working with, among other details.

There's "at least like 50 arrangements" already being worked on with producer Matt Wallace overseeing the sessions thus far.

The past few years have kept Slipknot busy.

Since the release of 2020's The End, So Far, Slipknot also ventured out on an anniversary tour in support of their 1999 self-titled breakout album, saw two lineup changes and finally released the long-shelved project Look Outside Your Window.

Now, they're looking ahead to new material, their first with drummer Eloy Casagrande and the still unknown replacement for Craig Jones.

What Jim Root Has Said About New Slipknot Music

While appearing on the Ride Bynd podcast, Root shared, "This new album we’re working on, that’s what we’re doing, we’re just jamming and Clown‘s arranging. He’s taking things that Eloy and I are playing, or me and Eloy and [Michael] Pfaff are playing, or he’s even sitting in on the jams. We’ll jam for like an hour-and-a-half, two hours and we might get four song ideas out of that and then we just spend time arranging and it’s so organic and it’s so real. It’s almost frightening."

Later within the chat, he added, “There’s a new life with this stuff. And having Eloy helps, man. He’s such a talented human being and he lives, eats like the samurai, the master. He has that. He has that quality. He lives, eats and breathes his drums ... He’s very knowledgeable. He’s very technical. But he also is very… he can lay back and get experimental — like even like Phil Collins/Genesis experimental. And his range of influences is so infinite. I’ll throw a drummer’s name on, like [The Police's] Stewart Copeland or something like that and he’ll be like, ‘Oh, oh' and he’ll try to like hit that mode. And there’s so many drummers that he looks up to that I’m not even aware of. So I’m learning shit from him, too. So it’s really good.”

What Jim Root Had to Say About His Own Writing

Though a member of Slipknot for close to three decades, Root says he's still making progress as a writer.

"For the first time, I’m listening to some of these arrangements as they’re growing. And this is the closest I’ve heard to the music that I can hear in my head that I can’t get out that I’ve ever been. And it’s exciting. And it’s like breathing a new life into wanting to create," Root enthused.

"If I had it my way, I’d have a studio behind my house and I would spend every waking hour in that studio only taking breaks to jump into a RZR [sport utility vehicle] and rip through the desert to clear my head to come back and work at music again."

What Does Slipknot's New Music Sound Like?

Though the band spent plenty of time in recent years revisiting their 1999 debut, Root shared, “The new shit we’re writing does not sound like that at all. We’re not de-evolving into that sort of thing. There’s elements of it. I mean, we write how we write. So, we’re always going to have a little bit of a vibe, but you know, you’re not going to hear, for lack of a better term, a ‘nu-metal record’ out of us, if that makes any sense."

Root then offered, "We’re working with Matt Wallace right now to write this stuff and there’s times where we just kind of sit back and we’re listening to what I just worked on and I’m just like, ‘Wow this is wild. This sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before.' Yet there’s a familiarity to it that feels like I’ve been listening to it my whole life and it’s just so organic. It’s just Slipknot music.”

As for the influence of new members, he adds, "It’s Slipknot, so we’re going to have a sound. But at the same time, having Eloy in the band is like such an honor to be able to jam with that guy .... But the way we’re approaching this, which is similar to the way it was being approached in the beginning, is like a garage band sort of vibe."

"It’s so organic and so honest and it’s so open to interpretation," says the guitarist of the music. "I couldn’t tell you what the direction of this next record is going to be. I know I’m writing some of the fastest like grindpicking riffs, some of the most melodic, like heavy, like doomy kind of riffs. A lot of like really pretty, you know just beautiful like clean interludes and things like that that are finding their way into these songs. A lot of just experimental — I don’t want to say Pink Floyd — but maybe somewhere in that wheelhouse.”

Slipknot's Jim Root Speaks With Ride Bynd

At present, there is no official album or song titles that were revealed by Root or a definitive timeline of when a new album might be released.

But the interview did provide one of the first acknowledgments that work, in earnest, has begun on their next studio album. In addition, the band's tour schedule is completely clear meaning that focus can firmly be on new music at this point in time.

Below, see a listing of all of the musicians who've been part of Slipknot over the years.