COREY TAYLOR On SLIPKNOT Lineup Changes: 'Not Every Great Band Can Keep Doing It With The Same People'

SLIPKNOT is currently working on its first album since 2008's "All Hope Is Gone" and the first since the 2010 death of bassist Paul Gray and December 2013 departure of drummer Joey Jordison, one of the band's founding members and key songwriters.

Asked by Ultimate-Guitar.com if it feels entirely different without Paul there, SLIPKNOT singer Corey Taylor said: "I mean, it's always gonna be different and nothing's ever gonna be the same. It's a better way to say it, to be honest. But all we can do is what we do. The way I've had to look at it is that not every great football team stays together and not every great band can keep doing it with the same people. It's the nice way of me saying that I can't just look at him as dead, which breaks my heart. I have to look at as, 'One of our most important pieces is gone — how do we make up for that?' So it's basically us pooling our talents to fill in this vacuum that has been left."

Unsurprisingly, Taylor was less willing to discuss the exit of Jordison, who issued a statement in January saying that he did not quit the band.

"That's something that's a little harder to talk about," Corey said. "I can't honestly legally talk about it. That's all I can really say about that."

Regarding the fact that SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root has been left in the position of having to assume much of the songwriting duties for the band's next studio album, Taylor said: "Let me tell you something about Jim Root — he is one of the best writers I've ever had the privilege of working with. The stuff that he comes up with? He's insane."

Corey recently described the musical direction of the new SLIPKNOT material as "a great mesh of [2001's] 'Iowa' and [2004's] 'Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses)'." He explained: "You've got the gorgeous melodies and the artistic direction of 'Vol. 3' and then you've got the absolute brutality of 'Iowa'. And I think people are gonna lose their minds when they hear it."

Taylor said in an interview with Front Row Live Entertainment on May 12 that the band's first album in six years is "coming along," adding, "I actually left the studio to come right down here. So it's a matter of time, trust me. It's gonna be rad . . . Everything is going exactly how it needs to go. So it's gonna be really awesome."

Even though SLIPKNOT's last album, "All Hope Is Gone", came out in 2008, Taylor said, "The good thing is we've always been writing, so there's a ton of stuff that we're pretty stoked on. It's exactly what you want it to be."

SLIPKNOT percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan told The Pulse Of Radio a while back that he has high hopes for the band's next album. "That record is going to be, I predict, one of the most serious things that we will have ever comprehended that we've ever done in our life," he said. "And we pretty much say that on every record, but I really feel that when the time comes, what will be on hand is going to be something almost unimaginable."

The band is rumored to have recruited drummer Jay Weinberg to play on the new album. Weinberg is the son of Max Weinberg, longtime BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND drummer.