Corey Taylor Speaks On Joey Jordison’s Departure Slipknot

I can't talk too much about it because we're going through the legalities of everything right now and settling everything, but it's when a relationship hits that T-section and one person's going one way and you're going the other. And try as you might to either get them to go your way or try and go their way, at some point you've got to go in the direction that works for you. This is me speaking in the broadest terms, with respect to Joey. I guess to sum it up, it was one of the hardest decisions we ever made. We're all happy right now and we hope that he is too. I've known him since '91, and that was before we were in bands together, and he's incredibly talented; he's just in a place in his life, right now, that's not where we are... in the nicest terms. I haven't talked to Joey in a while, to be honest, that's how different we are. It's not because I don't love him and I don't miss him. And it is painful; we talk about him all the time, but at the same time, do we miss him or do we miss the old him? That's what it really comes down too. It's just a fucking shame

We knew it was going to be hard, and that’s one of the reasons why we took our time coming back to it. Obviously without Paul, and with us splitting ways with Joey, it made everything a little harder. But with this band, it’s never been an issue of, “We can’t do it”—it’s always been an issue of “How can we do it? How do we do this?” So when something like that happened, we just kind of filled in the blanks for ourselves. We made sure that everything we did made sense, and that we were doing it for the right reasons. And we went for the music just from the standpoint of, if you want to do it, you’ve got to find a way to do it. The thing that we realized right away was, “It’s not going to be the same—so let’s not try and make it the same. Let’s just go for what our heart feels.” And once we figured that out, man, the music came really quickly; within two months, we had the basic template of what the album would be, and all that was left was to hammer out the details, which is always the best part, anyway. So yeah, it was a really good experience, man. I'm not gonna sit here and dog somebody that I spent 15 years building something amazing with — I'm not gonna do that. And the fans need to understand that. And I think for the most part most of them do, but there's always gonna be those people who just want a little more so they can talk shit. And that's the only reason why they want the full story — so they can talk shit

Me and Jim are the first ones to say that we learned so much from working with Paul that we've been able to take his, I don't wanna call it 'method,' but the way he used to do things, and we've applied it to what we did. And it was kind of like that with Joey. Joey, for the most part, was definitely a general in the studio, because he had such a great mind for it and knowing how to get the right kind of sonics and how to do certain things, and what the other potential for, like, ear candy or intros and stuff like that. So you kind of have to fill that blank in as well. There's legalities that are involved which prevent me from talking about it, but at the same time - and people need to realize this - there's respect. I'm not gonna talk about Joey's life, because it's not my place, and people need to realize that. If Joey wants to talk about the situation, he can. There’s only so far that I can give an explanation. For me, that has to be a sign of growing up, because before I would’ve just railed at whatever I thought the supposed evil was, but now it’s like, how do you explain this to the fans?

I’ve been writing some stuff, Jim has got a ton of stuff and the guys are actually together right now jamming and putting stuff together. It’s sounding really really good. I know in light of the news, I know it’s weird, but if anything positive can come out of this, it’s just that I hope the fans know that we’re really working towards putting out the best album we can