Earlier today, midwestern nine-headed wrecking crew Slipknot announced that they’d be dropping a new single, “The Chapeltown Rag,” on Friday, November 5th. The track would be the band’s first since the release of 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, and would be listeners’ first taste of the new album they’ve recorded in quarantine. Now, the wait is over, and you can listen to Slipknot’s new track below.
What listeners will undoubtedly notice from the get-go is that unlike, say, “Unsainted” or “All Out Life,” this track goes hard out the gate. There isn’t an intro section or some sort of gentle lull into the madness, it’s just crushing Slipknot right from the very beginning. The song definitely carries that theme throughout, sounding starker and harder than the band’s material has for some time. Corey Taylor bellows, “I’m afraid!” and we both sympathize and worry. This is a rager, whose clean chorus vocals can’t hide the knife in its boot and the blood on its face.
According to Taylor, “It’s classic Slipknot. And it’s frenetic. 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.”
Listen to Slipknot’s “The Chapeltown Rag” below:
“The Chapeltown Rag” will see its live premiere tomorrow night at Slipknot’s massive Knotfest LA livestream, which will consist of the band’s entire headlining set, but will also include “select appearances” from other performers including Killswitch Engage, Fever 333, Code Orange, Cherry Bombs (whose ranks include Alicia Dove, Corey Taylor’s wife), and Vended (the current project of Corey Taylor and Shawn “Clown” Crahan’s two sons). Tickets are available via the festival’s Veeps portal. Your average ticket is only fifteen bucks, but there are also pricier options with all sorts of perks — a hoodie, exclusive artwork to be revealed at the festival, and more.
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Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. The Pit is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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Words by Chris Krovatin
