Loudwire.com spoke to SLIPKNOT‘s Clown aka Shawn Crahan recently and you can see some extracts from the interview below. They discussed everything from the SLIPKNOT‘s recent live dates during the summer, whether the band are planning to record new material and about Paul’s passing. See below:

Many bands celebrate their debut album, but Slipknot has chosen to honor their second release ‘Iowa’– that must say a lot about what the album means to you and how it’s impacted fans?

I think it’s just because it such a brutal album in terms of metal. Nowadays, a lot of hardcore metal fans listen to Slayer and Metallica, and nothing else. Iowa was a proving point for us. We weren’t just some new genre that you might want to tag us as, we are a metal band.

The song ‘Spit It Out’ on our first album was kind of a middle finger to the industry; ‘Iowa’ was kind of like a whole album of middle fingers. For the follow up album, the label and other people involved were pressuring us to do things more melodically but we were like “Don’t we get a say in this? You’re just going to tell us what you want us to do? Last time I checked we’re the artists, we’re the ones creating it, it’s coming out of our minds, not yours”. A lot of these people weren’t even in bands so where do they get off telling us how to create our art. It was kind of just like they were hoping we’d write something more mainstream and more radio friendly but we were like ‘no.’

It also says a lot about the mentality of the people from Iowa. Iowa has a hard work ethic and people really go out of their way to do things themselves and build it from the ground up. The minute that you try to tell someone in Iowa how to do something that have pretty much already been doing their whole life, and are professional at, and someone outside of that specific thing, that wasn’t around for any of it, tries to tell you how to do it, you’re just kind of like “You don’t know what you’re talking about, when we do this, we do it right.” It says a lot about the Iowa work force.

Speaking of letting it rip, you are a force onstage. We talked about your stage-diving and crowd surfing; what brings that out of you, is it the adrenaline of the show?

Yeah it’s the adrenaline, it’s the kids, and it’s a lot of things — living in the moment. That outfit and that mask, especially the first gas mask, there’s something special about that guy. I talk about him like he’s somebody else because he is somebody else.

What about new music; I know there’s been different takes on whether or not there would be a new album. Is there anything you can tell us about that?

I know that everyone in the band is always writing music, whether it’s for Slipknot, their own satisfaction, or for a side project. I will say that the band has not been together writing music yet. We’ve not been together as a band to write music. If there’s any writing or recording going on, it’s happening by individuals and not as a group, which is kind of sad, but we deal with things how we can deal with them and try to move forward from there. Yes, we’d be remiss not to talk about Paul and his passing. Obviously, it has had a large impact on the band.

You wrote a song for Paul on your solo album, didn’t you?

Yeah I did, it’s called ‘Flat Lace’, I wrote it actually between five and six years before he died, and the song is about his death, like I predicted it.

Read the full article on Loudwire.com here.

Pick up a copy of SLIPKNOT’s 10th Anniversary Edition of IOWA by clicking this link.