Time was on Slipknot's side during the recording process for We Are Not Your Kind, the band's sixth album that finally emerged last month. But band members still had their own individual doubts early on.

Namely, guitarist Jim Root remembers having some apprehension at the start of the album cycle, before all the band members were involved and while the songs were still in developing stages. Those doubts were soon quelled, however, when he and the group were given the luxury of time in woodshedding the tracks. The opportunity resulted in home-brewed guitar parts from Root that he said took things to the "next level."

"At the beginning, I kind of felt like, 'I don't know if any of this is good,'" Root recalled to Kerrang this week. "When more band members start coming in, and when you listen to it back with new people and you pick it apart more, it's a really good thing that we were able to do all that, because it just makes you go, 'Okay.'"

Elsewhere in the interview, he continued, "While I was at home I would listen to the latest versions of demo stuff that we'd worked on, and that was the time we were afforded to let these things evolve, where I was able to listen to it and go, 'Yeah, that's cool, but maybe if I tried this it would work better.' And that's when it gets to the next level. I think it was a progression and an evolution."

The lengthy sessions behind them, Slipknot can revel in the fruits of their labor as they wind down the Stateside Knotfest Roadshow before heading to Australia with fellow metal giants Metallica. (Get Slipknot concert tickets here.) In fact, group founder and percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan told Kerrang that now is the "greatest time of Slipknot." He explained, "We worked so hard for so long, and it was really hard to stop and enjoy the success, and enjoy what was happening around us."

Still, the elongated process gave the musicians more time to hone in on their respective sounds. As for Root, he claimed the second-guessing he often experiences on some new tunes' riffs are nil this time around, thanks in part to the guidance of We Are Not Your Kind producer Greg Fidelman.

"Usually when we write records or whatever, halfway through the tour cycle I'm like, 'Oh shit, I could have done this on this song,' or, 'This harmony would have been good here,'" Root said. "But we had the time to work that stuff out a little bit during the process, and with the help of Fidelman, everything came together."