Slipknot Release Their First New Music Of 2021

The modern metal heavyweights are officially back at it with their first new track in over 2 years. Slipknot’s “The Chapeltown Rag” picks up where the band left off from their furiously stunning 2019 album, We Are Not Your Kind. Offering a familiar taste in the way their last record excelled instrumentally, the musicianship behind “Chapeltown Rag” sees the band firing on all cylinders. It’s a fair balance of all nine members and each of their talents, with an obvious standout performance from vocalist Corey Taylor.

Lyrically, Corey Taylor delves into some new territory with themes about the toxicity of online culture and social media. “It’s a punisher man. It’s classic Slipknot. And it’s frenetic” says Taylor. “But lyrically, it’s coming from a point of talking about the various manipulations that can happen when social media meets media itself. 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.”

“WHEN EVERYTHING IS GOD ONLINE…NOTHING IS,” is a bleakly conclusive stamp to the track’s extremely punishing outro. Overall, the new single has tremendous depth thematically and instrumentally, and it only leaves listeners hungry for what the nine has in store, come 2022.

Slipknot are set to perform at Knotfest Los Angeles today where they’ll be giving the new single its official live debut. The band is live streaming their entire performance for 72 hours with virtual tickets available via knotfest.veep.com.

While Corey Taylor has previously noted the upcoming Slipknot record picks up on where the band left off with We Are Not Your Kind, it’ll be interesting to see what new punches the band pulls on their upcoming release. Hints of a possible Slipknot concept record have surfaced throughout recent years, and their last record even had elements of a conceptual binding. Whatever comes of it, Slipknot’s seventh studio album will likely to be their most climactic work yet, as founder Shawn Crahan recently noted it’ll be the band’s final album on Roadrunner Records — the label behind all of Slipknot’s studio albums since their self-titled debut in 1999.