Slipknot ripped through their appearance at Sonic Temple over the weekend without founding percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan. According to frontman Corey Taylor during the show, Crahan was absent due to oral surgery going a little harder than planned.
"Obviously we are missing one of our brothers," said Taylor. "Clown, yesterday, broke a tooth and had to have it removed. There's an issue. He had to stay home for medical reasons. But he insisted that we come here and fucking play this fucking show for each and every goddamn one of you.
"He is missed, he is essential and, god damn it, on the count of three, I want you to fucking tell him all that he is so fucking loved. I want to hear you scream — one, two, three!"
The show ran as follows:
- "People = Shit"
- "Eyeless"
- "Disasterpiece"
- "Before I Forget"
- "Custer"
- "Psychosocial"
- "The Devil in I"
- "The Heretic Anthem"
- "Unsainted"
- "Wait and Bleed"
- "Vermilion"
- "Duality"
- "Spit It Out"
- "Surfacing"
As for the future of Slipknot in the short term, they're working on new single called "Long May You Die".
Slipknot revealed the news on their Instagram, saying: "Slipknot fans are talking amongst themselves about 'Long May You Die' being a new song written during the recent recording sessions. 'You're right. You're absolutely right.'" The new song will be Slipknot's first with new drummer Eloy Casagrande and whoever replaced Craig "133" Jones – we're still not clear on that one.
In a recent interview, Casagrande noted that part of his audition process was to contribute to new music. "[The band] asked me to extend my stay by another 5 days, so we could record some things," he said. "I think that was also part of the audition, they threw new ideas at me to see what my songwriting was like. They wanted to test me in every way."
Slipknot guitarist Jim Root also spoke a little about new material in an interview with Tone-Talk, though Root claimed the band hadn't done much yet.
"We haven't really started doing that yet. We will be doing that real soon. Eloy has sent me some drum loops. He e-mailed me some… Eloy does a lot of drum videos on his own and play-alongs in his home studio and stuff like that. So he sent me five or six minute — from a minute long to one that's a couple minutes long of just him playing drums, and I downloaded those on to my computer and I converted them into files that I could import into Pro Tools. I spent some time kind of trying to write some riffs to them.
"It was a little bit difficult because he basically sent me two-minute-long drum solos. And I'm not really good at finding a bit, chopping it out and then looping it to make that, like, 'Okay, this sounds like it could be like an intro riff on the drums. And this sounds like it could be like a verse riff on the drums.' 'Cause the particular ones that he sent me, it's, like, a lot of real stunt drumming and really busy stuff. And I wrote riffs to most all of it.
"There's one in particular that I'm thinking about that if it does turn into a song, it's gonna be an awfully chaotic song, which could be really cool. So, yes and no, he's contributing, but we haven't really gotten there yet. We're trying to get these shows under our belt first and then it's time to put our nose to the grindstone and start the creative writing process."
