COREY TAYLOR: 'I'm Not Ready To Make A SLIPKNOT Album'

SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor says that it's "still too soon" for the band to be thinking about recording a new studio album following the death in May 2010 of the group's bassist, Paul Gray.

SLIPKNOT completed a European festival run earlier this summer, which marked the band's first live gigs since Gray's passing.

Taylor has been ambivalent about doing a new studio album, although percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan and drummer Joey Jordison have been much more confident about the band recording again.

Taylor tells U.K.'s Kerrang! magazine for this week's cover story, "It's still too soon. At least that's how I feel. I'm not ready to make a SLIPKNOT album. I think there will be a day when we do. But for me, doing it now wouldn't make sense.

"You can't do a three-week tour then jump into the studio, especially after something like this. It makes more sense to do a few more tours and reconnect as a band first.

"If we jumped right in, it wouldn't be about the absence. It would be about the rest of us. We were the nine, but there's a piece missing. We should allow people to pay their respects before we come out with new music. We should do this right."

Jordison told The Pulse Of Radio not long ago that he thinks the band's next album could be its most intense. "We're a family, and losing a family member sucks," he said. "But you can't help that, but you need to move on and I think that what we're gonna do might be the most powerful thing that we've ever created."

SLIPKNOT's last record, "All Hope Is Gone", was released in 2008.

Taylor and Crahan confirmed last week that SLIPKNOT will tour the U.S. sometime next spring.