When Slipknot hit the studio in 2008 to record All Hope Is Gone, percussionist Shawn Crahan, vocalist Corey Taylor, guitarist Jim Root, and DJ Sid Wilson also recorded a separate album. Those sessions were dubbed Look Outside Your Window. While various members of the band have been teasing its release for years, we still haven't gotten anything.
During a recent interview on Mosh Talks With Beez, M. Shawn Crahan aka Clown elaborated on what the hold up was. Blabbermouth excerpted the meaty excerpt.
"The reason why we never can commit to a date or anything is because — don't make it confusing. Don't make it something it's not. Don't call it something it's not. Accept it. It's music. It's art. It doesn't carry the Slipknot name. Joey [Jordison, then-Slipknot drummer] wasn't up the hill playing drums. He doesn't know anything about the songs. I think he's only been to the house once or twice. It's a completely different project. It was never held to piss people off. It was never held to prove a point.
"It's been mixed. It's been mastered. It's ready to go," he revealed. "We wanna put it out. But it's only gonna be put out when the priority is created correctly. It's up to everyone to sort of shut their mouths and not make it confusing. Don't let it affect Slipknot. That's the priority — Slipknot, Slipknot, Slipknot, Slipknot. Everything else is just beautiful things that branch off of it. Everyone, quit confusing it. Accept it. We are an anomaly. We're too much. We're everything and anything at the same time and no time at all."
After being asked if the pandemic would've been a good time to release this album, Shawn responded: "Well, okay, you put me in a hard position, but I think I can talk about it as an adult, 'cause I'm an adult, and everybody's an adult, and these are facts — these are facts, and I'm gonna speak facts.
"We have never really had a tentative [release date]. We speculate. So we get a speculation. We get a date under speculation. But we don't even really make it tentative. We just kind of throw it out there — speculate. But then someone like Corey might wanna do his solo album earlier. I love that. Let's not get this confused. We really don't have to go much more into it than that. I love that he wants to do his thing. I've got the rest of my life to do 'Look Outside Your Window' with him. But he may only have right now, maybe in his mind, to do what he wants to do. It's not up to me to dictate what he may or may not want to do with his life, his career, even though we're so together with one thing, bonded by one. We never make everything confusing; everybody else does.
"So, I will tell you that we speculated many times during the pandemic very decent dates [that would include sufficient] marketing. But remember, I have my whole life to be able to do this with him, and Jim, and for all of us…
"It was created because we wanted to create art, and we did, and it ended up being something that everybody's gonna want, and they're gonna get it when it's right," Crahan explained. "Like we should think about having babies — only do it when we know we can be good mothers and fathers, when we know we're not gonna walk away from each other, when we know we're gonna be there for a reward for the child and give all of ourselves. That's the way we tried to do it, and we did — we tried to get it out.
"The reason why I'm holding out is because it's absolutely beautiful — I'm very proud of it; I'm so proud of everybody in it — and it just needs to be represented correctly," he added. "It needs not affect anybody negative. Nobody should be affected by it in any negative way; I won't allow it. And if it means people are going to, it will never see the light of day. 'Cause people make things confusing, and I won't allow it. Because when you grow older, you become wiser."
Clown is certainly never at a loss for words, but I am always at a loss for what he's actually saying.
A few years ago, frontman Corey Taylor elaborated on Look Outside Your Window during an interview with Eddie Trunk last year, saying the material has "more of a Radiohead vibe."
"We've been trying to find a way to release those songs for God knows how long." Taylor said at the time. "They were actually something that we were recording… We had two different studios going on. And one group of guys was recording what ended up becoming Look Outside Your Window, and then the bulk of the band was making All Hope Is Gone.
"The stuff from Look Outside Your Window is really, really — I mean, there's no real way to describe it. It's experimental, but it's super vibey, super melodic. It's really good. It's hard to explain. There's something about those songs. They're very solemn, very energetic, very artistic. For people who are used to a certain way of Slipknot sounding, this doesn't sound anything like that. It's much more of a rock vibe. Honestly, it's much more of a Radiohead vibe, to be honest."
