As Slipknot prepares to hit the road for tours celebrating the 10th anniversary of the masked Iowa group's first album, frontman Corey Taylor is making plans to record his first solo album rather than go back to his other band, Stone Sour, at the end of the cycle.

"I know I have this album that I need to make," Taylor tells Billboard.com, "and I'm the kind of guy that if I can't get that done then it's going to hold me back from all this other stuff I want to do. I just know I've got to make it or I can't branch out."

He adds that there are "a lot of songs I've written that don't fit with either band, really" and describes the material as "kind of a cross between the Foo Fighters and Social D, with some Johnny Cash mixed in." Country will be part of the mix -- "Obviously there's a country background that comes built-in with living in Iowa," Taylor notes -- but he also promises that "there's a lot of upbeat, just flat-out hard rock tunes."

"I've never let myself get painted into a corner," Taylor explains. "I've refused to accept the fact that I can't make any kind of music I want. I think it took people a minute to understand that, but now I'm at a point where I can do anything and people will take it seriously."

But until September, when Slipknot is scheduled to finish touring, Taylor says he's seriously committed to the group, which is continuing to tour in support of its fourth album, last year's "All Hope Is Gone."

The nine-piece group plans to tour the U.S., Canada and the European festival circuit with a show Taylor says is "getting away from the pyro and way more visual, video-oriented this time."

And, he acknowledges, it feels good to have a 10-year anniversary to mark. "It's funny because I've seen so many next-bit-things come and go in the last 10 years, and I look around and go, 'Wow, we're still here.' Ever time we've put an album out people would write us off, but ... we just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger," he says.

"It not only proves so many people were wrong but that we were right," he continues. "My dream wasn't just to make it but it was to stay here and be able to do whatever we want to do, which is just how it's worked out."