SLIPKNOT percussionist and co-founder Shawn “Clown” Crahan has revealed how LACUNA COIL vocalist Cristina Scabbia ended up contributing to two songs on the band’s long-awaited album Look Outside Your Window.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Crahan explained that Scabbia’s past relationship with SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root — which lasted from 2004 to 2017 — played a key role in her involvement on the project. She appears on the tracks “Christina,” a spoken-word piece featuring an Italian poem she wrote, and “Is Real.”
“Jim and she were dating,” says Crahan. “She’s a talented artist, and she was up in the house. I had to go to Jim, like, ‘Hey, what do you think about getting Cristina on?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely.’”
Crahan went on to describe how he specifically shaped her contribution, even asking her to write original material for the recording.
“The first thing I did was make her write a poem, a letter of intent in Italian. I told her to make it about batteries that are dying that cannot be recharged,” he says. “And she’s like, ‘OK.’ I have the piece of paper in Italian, and she did her best to read it to me, but I’ve never read it since then or memorized it. I just like to hear it the way it is. Jim and I were producing her, really making her get conviction. By the end, you could just feel it.”
He also recalled a standout studio moment involving SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor, who was surprised by Scabbia’s vocal performance on “Is Real.”
“He had already sung on the song,” Crahan says. “So he thinks she’s just doing the poem, but then she busts into that vocal, singing, going for it. I just remember Corey going back a little bit and he goes, ‘OK.’ He loved it, but it really surprised him in a good way.”
Look Outside Your Window will finally be released on Saturday, April 18, for Record Store Day.
The album itself dates back to the sessions for 2008’s All Hope Is Gone, but stands apart from a typical SLIPKNOT release. The material was written and recorded by percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan alongside Corey Taylor, guitarist Jim Root, and DJ Sid Wilson, with the group deliberately stepping outside the band’s usual sonic framework.
Clown first publicly acknowledged the project back in 2018, revealing that the four members used downtime during the sessions to explore a more experimental, psychedelic-leaning direction — free from expectations and pressure.
Look Outside Your Window features the following track listing:
- 11th March
- Moth
- Dirge
- Christina
- Is Real
- Away
- In Reverse
- Toad
- Juliette
- U Can’t Stop This
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