Corey Taylor is comfortably ensconced in Stone Sour for the time being, but let’s check out some truth vs. fiction about a couple of other matters: is he the “known singer” who’s working under wraps with Velvet Revolver?
“To be continued!” Taylor tells Billboard.com with a long, hearty laugh. Neither a confirmation nor a denial — and he’s not saying anything more than that, either. As for the future of Slipknot in the wake of bassist Paul Gray’s sudden death in May, Taylor is more forthcoming but hardly definite.
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“I go back and forth,” he acknowledges. Though the group has three Sonisphere Festival shows this summer in Europe and is tipped to play at this year’s Rock in Rio festival, Taylor says that “there are moments when I’m like, ‘Let’s keep going for (Gray),’ and there are moments when I’m like, ‘It’s not the same without him.’ Right now my main concern is baby steps. We lost a huge piece of our band. We lost a huge member of our family — in my opinion the biggest — and it’s a different vibe now. So right now I’m just taking it step by step, and I can only hope that the other guys in the band are as well.”
While other Slipknot members have spoken about starting a new album, Taylor says he’s not nearly in that headspace.
“There’s a lot of things I’ve got to figure out about myself before I can even contemplate that,” he explains. “There’s a big part of me that wonders if I’m the guy for that band anymore. I’m in such a different place in my life…musically, spiritually. I’m not the angry kid anymore. A lot of things don’t mean the same to me anymore, and there’s a lot of things I don’t feel like saying anymore. Does it make sense anymore? We’ll just have to see.”
In the meanwhile, Taylor is having no problem staying busy. Stone Sour — which also includes Slipknot guitarist Jim Root — will be on the Nightmare After Christmas tour with Avenged Sevenfold until Feb. 13, then head to Australia for Soundwave Festival shows in late February and March. On March 24 it kicks off the first Avalanche Tour with Halestorm, Theory of a Deadman, Skillet and Art of Dying.
A follow-up to 2010’s “Audio Secrecy” could also be in the offing, Taylor says. “We were talking about doing that even before Paul passed away,” he says. “It’s something we’re just kind of throwing around now. It’s in its infancy, but we’ve definitely been talking about making another Stone Sour album.”
Before that, however, Taylor will deliver his first book, “The Seven Deadly Sins: Settling the Argument Between Born Bad and Damaged Good,” which is currently scheduled for a July 12 publication. Taylor, who’s planning a book tour to promote it, says it’s about “me basically saying they’re not sins. They’re things we’re born with, things that we deal with and things that in the long run help us to be better people. So it’s me kind of taking the piss out of the whole sin thing, but also balancing it with stories from growing up, from being on the road and how I handled these ‘deadly sins’ and hopefully came out on the other side as a better person.
“It’s funny. It’s dark,” Taylor says, “and it’s thought-provoking, hopefully.”