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FORGOTTEN HISTORY: Jim root | History Defined

“I told her to write a poem about batteries that are dying that cannot be recharged”: Slipknot’s Shawn “Clown” Crahan explains how Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia ended up on Look Outside Your Window

Scabbia, who was in a relationship with ’Knot guitarist Jim Root from 2004 to 2017, lends her voice to two songs on the long-delayed project

Metal Hammer

“John 5 was probably the only other dude who was playing a Tele in metal. By nature, it was designed for country and chicken pickin’”: Why Jim Root eschewed traditional metal guitars and made the Telecaster his main Slipknot instrument

The player reveals who first drew him to the now 75-year-old instrument – and it might surprise you

Guitar World

“Joey was the best that ever did it. The greatest drummers would come to our shows to watch this guy play”: Slipknot DJ Sid Wilson pays tribute to his late former bandmate Joey Jordison

Slipknot’s founding drummer departed the band in 2013, before dying in July 2021 aged 46

Metal Hammer

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"The vibe is definitely Slipknot except no screams." Slipknot fan compares Look Outside Your Window album to Pink Floyd after getting early listen, claims Lacuna Coil's Cristina Scabbia appears

Look Outside Your Window, a long-shelved project recorded in 2008, is due to come out on Record Store Day, April 18

Metal Hammer

“We were packing up, then all of a sudden he goes, ‘Have you been down to the basement?’” The iconic EHX Holy Grail has been championed by Jim Root and John Frusciante – and now the lost prototype has been found

The classic reverb pedal can be found on pedalboards the world over, but JHS Pedals' Josh Scott has tracked down the first one

Guitar World

“I wanted it to be a workhorse I could bash around, beat up, hit with metal pipes and get thrown into kegs without breaking in half”: The making of Jim Root’s Telecaster, the guitar that brought Fender into the modern age

Some metal players prefer the traditional high-performance brands. Others favor medieval shapes. Not Root. The Slipknot guitarist wanted something old-school, classy… indestructible

Guitar World

Long-delayed Slipknot project Look Outside Your Window will finally drop in 2026, Shawn “Clown” Crahan promises

The “experimental”, “melodic” album was recorded in 2008 and has been delayed again and again and again over the last seven years

Metal Hammer

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“There’s no special effects – there were kids falling through ceilings, flying through glass, jumping off roofs”: From kicking booze to an anarchic video shoot, the story of Slipknot’s biggest single, Duality

Slipknot were one of the biggest names of the nu metal era – then the lead single from their third album made them immortal

Metal Hammer

“Fender needed something to bring them into more modern times”: How Jim Root’s radical signature Telecaster updated a Fender mainstay for the 21st century

The Slipknot guitarist was originally pushed towards Charvel, but he had his sights set on reinventing a Fender classic

Guitar World

“Some might say a guitar at this kind of price point has no business resonating so well”: Harley Benton ST-80FR MN review

Harley Benton pays homage to the golden age of shred with this single-pickup and Floyd Rose-equipped firecracker

MusicRadar

Slipknot’s Jim Root once asked Diamond Rowe of nu metal up-and-comers Tetrarch for guitar lessons: “I was like, ‘OK, dude, come on!’”

Rowe’s nu metal revivalists have also been endorsed by members of Fear Factory and Hatebreed

Metal Hammer

“Six finished arrangements”: Slipknot are putting together a new record after all

Jim Root says he wants to make a “raw” album

MusicRadar

Jim Root wants Slipknot’s new album to be made like the debut and Iowa: “I would like to revisit the raw energy of how those first two records were recorded”

The guitarist also reveals that he has “six finished arrangements” for the nu metal icons’ eighth studio album

Metal Hammer

“The last thing you want to do is play a widdly-widdly riff that’s getting in the way of the vocal”: Those Damn Crows’ Ian ‘Shiner’ Thomas on how to write a No.1 album, what he learned from Nirvana, and the Slipknot riff he wished he wrote

With the Welsh rockers' latest album, God Shaped Hole, topping the charts, we check in with riff-master Shiner to talk song structure, grunge inspirations, and knowing when not to play

MusicRadar

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Slipknot wrote “a bunch” of new music during the pandemic – and guitarist Jim Root says they’re scrapping all of it

“We need to just kind of, like, maybe sweep all that shit under a rug and start fresh”

Guitar World

“You might laugh a little. The post office shipped your guitar to Jim Root”: This metal fan ordered a new guitar from Sweetwater – but it ended up with the Slipknot guitarist

Root randomly received a new Jackson that was destined for another player, after it went missing for a number of weeks

MusicRadar

“For some reason, the post office shipped your guitar to Jim Root of Slipknot”: Sweetwater mailed a metal fan's Jackson guitar to a metal legend

He received a flight case but no guitar

Metal Hammer

“I just want to roll into it with an energy like it’s all starting again”: Slipknot’s Clown teases new album (and Look Outside Your Window) coming soon

“We got a new album,” the percussionist and Slipknot co-founder declares

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Metal Hammer

“I keep telling Clown that I’m just gonna throw it up on Youtube”: Slipknot guitarist Jim Root often threatens to leak long-delayed album Look Outside Your Window

Sick of waiting for Slipknot’s atmospheric rock album to come out? So is guitarist Jim Root!

Guitar World

“A lot of people are feeling the same way. They're like, ‘I’m covered with Superstrats and Strats, but I don't have an offset…’”: Misha Mansoor on the emergence of offsets in metal music – and why he should have seen it coming

The Periphery guitarist recently worked with Jackson to produce one of 2024's most talked-about custom builds – but he's not the first player to have dragged the offset into heavy territory over the past few years

Guitar World

“The sound quality is incredible; it can be quite hard to tell the difference between the Kemper and a real amp”: Tony Iommi has been experimenting with digital amp modelers – and he’s used one to record new material

The guitarist has been using a Kemper in the studio, and his new music features a blend of both tube and digital amps

Guitar World

“I started playing $150 Ibanez guitars because onstage I would take damage… Clown used to use metal bars. We were very unsafe”: Mick Thomson reflects on 25 years of Slipknot’s incendiary debut – and what it was like to see his solos erased

If Slipknot's debut remains a true face-ripper all these years later maybe it is because they brought the chaos of the stage show into the studio. Thomson can remember it vividly, the gear, the danger, the risk to his guitars from stray iron pipes, and he wouldn't have it any…

Metal Hammer

"We were nobodies but in that moment, it felt like we had a shot." How Slipknot overcame jealousy, substance abuse and trauma to become metal's most important band

25 years on from their self-titled debut, Slipknot look back at the years that helped them define 21st Century metal

Metal Hammer

“They would tell us directly to our faces, ‘You’re not going to last’”: Other bands hated Slipknot on their first Ozzfest tour – but Sharon Osbourne saved them

Jealous bands would “shit talk” Slipknot when they made their breakout appearance on the 1999 Ozzfest

Guitar World

“When you first pick up a Tele or a Jazzmaster, you’re not thinking about neoclassical scales or shredding. But the more you play them, it’s like, ‘Wow! They kinda rip!’” Jim Root on upsetting metalheads and Fender purists, and his amp modeling conversion

The Slipknot guitarist’s come to Jesus moment with the Quad Cortex doesn’t mean he’s selling his Orange amps just yet. He just likes to keep his options open. You might even see him shred on a Gretsch…

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