Clown Discusses Slipknot’s Unreleased Paul Gray Tribute Song
The music that artists release into the world tends to be only a mere fraction of the music that they’ve actually created and recorded — such in the case of Slipknot, who, according to Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan, have an unreleased Paul Gray tribute song waiting to be shared.
During an interview with Minneapolis’ 93X, Clown referred to the track while explaining the Knot’s songwriting process. Every member is involved in the creation of their music, and he described every individual’s input as a different “color” of the masterpiece, or the song.
“There are so many songs that have never been released because they get taken up to a point, and they’re doing good, but then they just sort of fall short because maybe that right brush just couldn’t bring that color yet,” he said. “So we hold it back. There’s tons of music.”
“We have a song that we wrote for Paul Gray called ‘Without the Gray,’ and it’s probably my fault, but I’ve held it for a long time. I don’t know why,” he admitted. “It was too close in the beginning, and it seemed like it needed to be for us more than for everyone else. And now I don’t care, I want it to be for everyone else instead of us.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that the members of Slipknot haven’t been able to work with each other directly the way they would during the pre-pandemic days, Clown added that there’s been a lot of “fuss” while working on their follow-up to 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind.
He didn’t confirm whether or not “Without the Gray” will end up on the new album, or if it will ever be released at all. However, elsewhere in the interview, he said he’s hopeful that the record will be released sometime in 2021.
Watch the full interview below.
Gray tragically died in May of 2010 from an accidental overdose. Slipknot’s 2014 album .5: The Gray Chapter was dedicated to their fallen bandmate — especially the song “Skeptic.”