Slipknot have unleashed their first new music in over two years, a brutally heavy track named The Chapeltown Rag.
Following 2019's We Are Not Your Kind, the new track is described by frontman Corey Taylor as “a punisher," “frenetic” and “classic Slipknot," and sees the Iowa nine-piece stylistically revisit the chaotic arrangements of their first two albums, Slipknot (1999) and Iowa (2001).
Kicking off with an Eyeless-style breakbeat from resident turntablist and onstage hypeman Sid Wilson, the track quickly descends into madness, with guitarists Jim Root and Mick Thomson offering up their usual brand of chugging drop B riff work underneath Corey Taylor's savage vocals, which sound stronger than ever. Check out the track's official visualizer below.
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The track is said to have been written after Corey Taylor watched a Netflix documentary on the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who murdered multiple women in the area of Chapeltown in Leeds, England in the late '70s.
Lyrically, the track is inspired by the moral failings revealed by the film – the case was botched by investigators who became wrongly convinced that the killer was only targeting prostitutes – which are echoed in the current age of the internet and social media.
“It’s coming from a point of talking about the various manipulations that can happen when social media meets media itself,” Taylor explains. “And the different ways that these manipulations can try to pull us in different directions, in the fact that we’re all becoming addicts to it, which is very, very dangerous.”
“The Chapeltown Rag facilitates a sort of mindset that you’re going to like: it’s along the barnburner side of things,” adds percussionist, backing vocalist and Slipknot co-founder Shawn “Clown” Crahan.
Taylor also says that the dynamic in the Slipknot camp is healthy, adding that they're “all getting along so well," and that it “feels like it did when we first started touring."
“When we first started touring, we were really tight and we all did everything together,” he says. “Then obviously, as time went on, our personalities got bigger and our addictions got bigger. We all pulled apart in a lot of different ways and it was hard to get back to that. But now, it almost feels like it’s come full circle.”
Slipknot began teasing the new song earlier this week, when, via social media, they encouraged fans to visit a mysterious website named The Chapeltown Rag. The site hosted nine NFTs for sale, which when fans would hover over with their mouse would play what we now know are audio snippets from The Chapeltown Rag.
The band are scheduled to give the track its live debut during their set at Knotfest Los Angeles at the Banc of California Stadium later today (November 5). The show will be livestreamed from 6PM PT, and tickets are available at $20 apiece over at Veeps.
Slipknot's new album – which is yet to receive an official title or release date – will be their last with longtime label Roadrunner Records. It will follow the tragic death of the band's first drummer Joey Jordison, who appeared on their first four albums: Slipknot (1999), Iowa (2001), Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) (2004) and All Hope is Gone (2008).
