The masked marauders of Slipknot have elaborated on plans for their next album, but they reiterate that they’re in no hurry to enter the studio.

In a new interview with Billboard.com, frontman Corey Taylor and percussionist Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan said that everyone in the band has ideas and is writing new material, but that nothing will coalesce until the members get together to come up with a game plan. And what’s preventing that from happening right now is the absence of bassist and songwriter Paul Gray, who died in 2010, too recently to make the thought of making new music a creative celebration.

In fact, both Taylor and Crahan expect Slipknot’s next studio album to resound with the pain and depression of the band playing without their founding member. In some ways, Crahan said the album will likely be comparable to ‘Iowa,’ the band’s most brutal and agonizing record to create.

“What’s next is a lot of what ‘Iowa’ was — very angry and very hateful and very evil,” Crahan told Billboard. “This is my opinion only, but I think it will have that layer of anger and hate and evil that will come with being just so sad, but … I think a really, really, really special change in our career is coming. That’s what we want, and I know that’s what Paul would want.”

Taylor agreed that the heaviness of the album will be fueled by depression. “We know that everything we do on that album is going to be about Paul,” he said. “It’s going to be very melancholy. It’s going to be a more saddened form of rage when it does happen, and it’ll be a whole path that we’ve never gone down before.”

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