Slipknot may appear to be on a break, but that's really not the case. Yes, Corey Taylor is out in full promotion of Stone Sour at the moment, but percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan reveals to NME that the band's other members have kept busy working on music have a different approach as they prepare their next release.

“I will give you this – we have decided to do things differently,” Clown told NME. “Our label had been bought and sold, people who used to give me advice are gone now, we’re still standing. We’re not going to wait around for Corey Taylor to say that he’s ready, no one’s going to wait for me to finish directing a movie, the same thing goes if someone wants to go out on tour with someone else."

He continues, "Every three or four months we’ve been getting together and we’ve been writing for up to 30 days. Currently, we have about 27 pieces of work – about seven or eight are completed. They’re not completed songs, that’s far from the truth. That’s where people start fighting over Corey Taylor not being there or Jim wanting to do something else. We as artists have demanded that we get together every three or four months and blow our brains out with art. We’ve been trying to create as much art as possible."

Crahan says the writing even preceded the end of the band's tour cycle for .5: The Gray Chapter, with the band working on music for the full three years of touring that album. The percussionist says of Taylor that the singer will need a break after touring with Stone Sour, but as usual, it won't be long after that break before he's back to writing for the next Slipknot disc.

"A lot of us are meeting in September to start working on those 27 pieces of music and we're going to add to that," says Crahan. "Our goal is to get to somewhere where it feels like we could have a double album. Whether or not we'll get to that, I have no idea. It's almost an impossible thing to arrive at because you have to have so much music and pick what's right. But I would like to have a double album and I would like to have a concept album. I've been speaking to Corey [Taylor] and Jim [Root] and we're not just going to 'do it.' We're not going to be contrived. It has to be right, it has to work for all of us."

While things are still very much in the formative stages, Crahan did hint that the significance of it being the band's sixth album and also his number in the group has made the new album an exciting prospect for him, especially given the number six's associations in the bible, in computer technology, in math and other places in society. Read more of Crahan's update at NME.

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