Eric blair of "The blairing out with eric blair show" conducted an interview with Slipknot and Stone Sour singer Corey Taylor at the bass player Live! concert & awards show, which was held this past saturday night (november 9) at the historic fonda theatre in los angeles, california. the concert honored heavy metal legend, Black Sabbath's geezer butler, and featured an all-star band of rock luminaries performing Black Sabbath songs as a tribute to butler. the performance culminated with geezer joining the band for the finale.

Asked about the progress of the songwriting sessions for Slipknot's next album, corey said: "we're just getting demos together right now, and [we're] hoping to get into the studio in the summer next year. so very soon we're gonna start having stuff to get out to the people."

Regarding how the new Slipknot material is shaping up so far, corey said: "it's very heavy. I mean, just based on the stuff that I've been demoing and the stuff that I've been working with [drummer] joey [jordison] on, it is, like… honestly, it's like [2004's] 'vol. 3: (the subliminal verses)' meets [2001's] 'iowa'. it's really dark, but there's some really good esoteric stuff to it, a lot of good melody without taking away from the heaviness. it's gonna be pretty rad."

Taylor told ARTISTdirect in a recent interview about Slipknot's forthcoming fifth studio album: "the stuff I'm writing right now is really dark. the stuff clown [shawn crahan, percussionist] is coming with is beyond. it's going to be cool to get the alchemists in the same room and see what happens."

Taylor told the pulse of radio that the band is not setting any deadlines on itself for making the new disc. "right now the only plan is go into the studio and see what happens," he said. "after that, it's up to us. but I mean, hopefully that tides everybody over, you know, just the fact that we are going to go into the studio and start seeing what we can see. 'cause I know I've got some music that I've been working on, joey's got a bunch of stuff, jim's [root, guitarist] got some stuff, clown's always got a lot of really interesting musical ideas, so it'll be really cool to kind of see what happens."

The new Slipknot album will be the band's first without bassist Paul Gray, another key member of the songwriting team who died of a drug overdose in may 2010.