Corey Taylor has told Spain's Resurrection Fest TV that SLIPKNOT's follow-up to 2014's ".5: The Gray Chapter" album will likely arrive next summer. Saying that 2019 will be "a big year for SLIPKNOT," Taylor added that the band's plans for the coming months include the launch of "a big world tour." But, he cautioned, "it all depends on when we get in the studio. Right now, the plan is for us to be in the studio early next year — like, first couple of months next year," he explained. "So, a couple of months to get that going, a couple of months to get production, new masks, new outfits, new everything. And hopefully be able to come and start touring in the summer when the album comes out.

Asked if SLIPKNOT has already commenced the songwriting process for its next album, Taylor said: "Right now, we have 20 songs that we've demoed. And they are really, really good. So it'll just come down to which ones come out the best, and we take that, we make the album out of that, put the album out. However, the way we're talking right now, we're trying to find ways that everyone can hear all the songs. So we'll put the album out, and then maybe we'll release something after that. It's something that we're really trying to think of — giving the audience more, giving the fans more of us. But it's gotta make sense — it's gotta be SLIPKNOT. It can't just be something that throw out there because we can; it's gotta have art, it's gotta have content, it's gotta have passion to it."

SLIPKNOT's Shawn "Clown" Crahan recently hinted to the Des Moines Register that the band will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its self-titled debut album in 2019. Asked whether the group had any plans to mark the milestone, he replied: "Oh, for sure."

".5: The Gray Chapter" was released following a six-year hiatus during which founding SLIPKNOT bassist Paul Gray died and drummer Joey Jordison was dismissed.

".5: The Gray Chapter" sold around 132,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 1 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD arrived in stores in October 2014 via Roadrunner.

Gray died in 2010 from a drug overdose, while Jordison was let go in December 2013, just before SLIPKNOT began recording the last album.