Clown on soon-to-be-released ‘Look Outside Your Window’: “It’s not Slipknot at all, not even close”
Clown has spoken about the long-awaited ‘lost’ album ‘Look Outside Your Window’, saying that it is “not even close” to sounding like Slipknot.
The record was recorded by the founding member and percussionist – real name Shawn Crahan – alongside Corey Taylor, Sid Wilson and Jim Root at the same time as they were working on 2008’s ‘All Hope Is Gone’. However, hopes of it being shared have remained unfulfilled and only one track from the sessions has seen the light of day: ‘All Hope Is Gone’ bonus track ‘Til We Die’.
Taylor, Root and Clown have all hinted at the release in recent years, and last month the latter revealed to NME that the long-awaited LP was out of his hands and with management for the final steps.
Now, in a new interview with Knotfest, the founding member has revealed more information about what fans can expect from the release, and confirmed that it is by no means a Slipknot-sounding record.
“It was never a Slipknot album. Not while it was happening, not while I’ve held onto it for 10 years, and certainly not fuckin’ when it comes out,” he told the outlet.
Sharing how they wrote the material while working on ‘All Hope Is Gone’, Clown recalled how the members would be interrupted during the process and put the project on hold to finish up the 2008 release. “We’d see them before they’d see us… We were already there jamming, and heard come somebody down the road, and we’d be like, ‘Fucker’. It might be the producer [Dave Fortman], and then we’d shoot ball rockets at him. It was a lot of fun. And we just did what you should do. We made music.”
“Now, if any of that music could have been Slipknot, it would have been brought down [to the studio]. But that’s not where Joey [Jordison, drummer] wanted to go. It’s not where Paul Gray [bassist] wanted to go. It’s not where Corey wanted to go,” he added. “It’s not where anyone wanted to go. We had ‘All Hope Is Gone’. So I just need people to know it’s not Slipknot at all, not even close.”
He was also asked if any of the material was inspired by Gray. “It’s just a hard one to explain,” he began. “We have a very close friend who’s struggling, and it’s unpredictable. And if you’re working on yourself and you need to be solid, it’s hard to depend on unpredictability. So you end up shutting the door a little bit for love purposes.”
The comments refer to the years running up to Gray’s death in 2010, which saw him struggle with addiction. The bassist had a history of addiction to the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and was later found dead in a hotel in Iowa. His widow Brenna would go on to say her husband spent his final weeks in a “blur” of drug abuse, and an Iowa doctor would later stand trial for prescribing him Xanax despite his previous struggles.
When asked if Gray ever tried to get involved in ‘Look Outside Your Window’, Clown responded: “That’s a tough one. I don’t know, because [my mindset was]: ‘If you want to be a part of this, you have to be a certain way’. And maybe he wasn’t being a certain way.
“So it’s easy for me to go, ‘No, you’re being the other way… That’s not what this is about. This is about just relaxing and fucking being an artist without all this pressure. You put pressure on,’,” he added. “But then again, I didn’t tell anybody to be or not to be, you know – you just found your place. Paul’s one of my best friends.”
At time of writing, an exact release date for ‘Look Outside Your Window’ has not been shared, although it is expected to be released in the first half of 2025.
Speculation about the project stems back to 2019, when Crahan said that the band were readying the release, and Corey Taylor later added that he “tried like hell to make those worlds come together” to complete the project.
In 2020, Clown revealed to NME that the band almost dropped it over Christmas 2019 but ultimately decided against it because they didn’t want it to interfere with their sixth studio album ‘We Are Not Your Kind’.
Afterwards, Corey Taylor began teasing the release again in August 2023, and Crahan said it could finally see the light of day that same year, but has failed to materialise so far.
The frontman then said in a discussion with NME that it was partly his fault that the record hadn’t been released yet. “I was talking to Clown about it the other day and he goes, ‘One of the reasons it hasn’t come out is because you keep putting shit out which keeps conflicting with when I want to release it!’” he said.
More recently, November saw guitarist Jim Root threaten to leak the album out of frustration, and Clown reflected on comments he made in a separate NME interview in 2023 – in which he assured us the release would be coming this year.Clarifying why it didn’t materialise last year, he told NME last month: “I did say it was going to be in 2024, and I gave it the best fight that I could to make it this year.”
As for where the release is up to now, he added: “What I can tell you is that I showed Corey the final artwork two days ago. It is happening, but unfortunately, because of Christmas and New Year and the way business works, I can’t slide it in this year.
“But you have my word, it’s out of my hands now. It’s being moved on, the money has been spent and there is a plan. The management has it and it is coming out.”
Elsewhere in that NME interview, the percussionist reflected on the band’s recent 25th anniversary tour, as well as plans for new material.
“Eloy [Casagrande, drummer] is in the band and there’s something happening between the nine of us right now that is very fun,” he said. “A lot is floating around and we probably have several albums in us right now. As for how things feel, I’m being completely honest with you now, it’s like a cloud has left.”
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Liberty Dunworth
NME
