In an interview with Bilboard, Slipknot’s percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan talked about the new album “All Out Life” and many other things. See excerts of the interview here:
“I was confident it would work. This felt right to me – baiting, drawing, whatever word you want to use.
“We wanted to create something brainless and draw you in and bring you in in a way that you’re used to… and remind you why you even like my f*cking band to begin with.”
“This is based off of watching entire families sitting at dinner tables and just destroying their time together on these brainless things. I can’t judge ’em for that. It is what it is.
“But I think they forget that they used to sit around without them – and that’s a big problem. I mean, you can learn piano or guitar on these [apps], and I’m sure they work, but you can’t forget that you can sit down at a real piano or pick up a real guitar.
“So [Touché] was a way of saying, ‘OK, all these things are in our future – as long as we don’t forget that there is a reality around us.'”
“‘All Out Life’ means – get the f*ck up, go live your life and live it all-out. The band’s been gone for three years. You want blood from me? You got it. That’s what I’ve been giving you for 20 years. But I want blood from you, too. We’re no longer just a band. We’re a culture.”
“What I can tell you is I’ve known all the words all the time, so I’ve been able to paint the dream world and the nightmare in my mind. [Conceptually, the album] breaks down to good vs. evil, or in this sense, evil vs. good.
“It’s about being a human being and experiencing what you have in correlating it to this world. This world is ugly and it’s supposed to be, and it has to be in order for art to lead to grandness and beauty.”
“Nothing is in stone. There are songs that are considered the album, but everything can change. We would never go do [concert] dates without an album, but… we’re not following any rules this time, not that we ever did.
“We’re on an outline, and I think everybody’s going to be pleasantly surprised.”
I’m just a lucky guy who has chosen metal to live with for a long time. Metal changed my life for good. It made me more confident and stronger. Metalheads are naturally far away from the mass mediocrity and don’t accept impostures from anybody else. Metal is more than music, it’s a life changing oportunity!