Jay Weinberg Set To Launch Debut Solo Single 'Sandstone' Feat. Deafheaven's George Clarke

It’s been a wild couple of years for ex-Slipknot drummer Jay Weinberg. After his shock 2023 exit, he jumped straight into Infectious Grooves and hit Australian stages in 2024. Since then, he’s teamed up with Suicidal Tendencies, wrapping their support slot and sideshows on Metallica’s long-awaited stadium tour down under with Evanescence.

Outside of touring duties, Weinberg's been chipping away at his solo career and on November 20th (Aussie time) we’ll finally hear the first taste of a new collaboration series, leading into an EP set for early 2026 which is stacked with guest appearances.

'Sandstone' is the debut lead single which features Deafheaven frontman George Clarke and to say it's turning heads in the heavy scene already is an understatement.

Early this morning, Wall Of Sound chatted exclusively with Jay about the new project, to which he shared "working with George was an absolute dream" before revealing how long he's been working on the lead single and what else to expect from his solo outing in the coming months.

"Oh boy. I'm really excited about it. I've been working on this song specifically between six and eight years.

Guitar is actually the instrument that I started with. I started playing drums when I was 14, but I started playing guitar when I was nine, and that's always been my primary writing instrument. Whenever I sit down to write stuff, it's typically with a guitar first.

And so I've thrown together different versions of what I would want to do with these songs, material I've written for a long, long time, and it just kind of started to make sense where I felt comfortable recording all the instruments myself, and then kind of pitching a song here or a song there to friends of mine."

As mentioned, 'Sandstone' is the first in a series of collaborations which finds Jay at the helm of the instrumentals while a guest vocalist lays down their craft to bring the tracks to life. The mastermind explained the method to his madness in creating a collaboration based project, rather than a side-project.

"I've always wanted to collaborate with mainly vocalists and just create a very low pressure, like, 'Hey, here's a song, why don't we', instead of... 'oh, we got to start a side project.'

In the instance of 'Sandstone', I really felt like the music I was creating really lent itself to what my friend George Clark would be able to do with his voice and his lyrics, and I just kind pitched it to him like, 'Hey, let's do this one song'.

And he heard that loud and clear, came in and completely schooled it. It was incredible to watch it come to a fully realised form of a song."

I'm not really one to set New Year's resolutions for myself. That's just never been me. But I did kind of say to myself at the beginning of this year, I will do something with this project by the end of this year.

The end result is here for you to enjoy and there's plenty more on the way into next year.

"It's the first song I've ever released under my own name, and it's the first song in a series of collaborations, an EP that I have that's in various stations of completion, but that I'm hoping to have out in the early part of 2026."

What do you think of the debut release for solo Jay Weinberg?

Words by Paul 'Browny' Brown @brownypaul