We are getting close to hear new SLIPKNOT music!
Today (July 19th), Slipknot hit their socials with a short, career-spanning video that ends in the image of a mysterious bloody masked face peering through a partially opened doorway and a snippet what sounds like a new song. The caption reads, “The beginning of The End,” and there’s a link to their site, slipknot1.com, which is all black, but for a list of four times: 4 PM | 7 PM | MIDNIGHT | 1 AM.
Meanwhile, album artwork and track listing have already leaked on Reddit and can be seen below.
The leak comes from a Reddit user named Keevie, who has been right with numerous album leaks in the past.
During an appearance on WZOR (Razor 94.7/104.7) radio station earlier this year, SLIPKNOT‘s drummer Jay Weinberg spoke about the musical direction of the band’s upcoming follow-up to 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind album.
“I would say we kind of turned up the dials on experimentation. And there’s some new things happening that are really exciting, really interesting, stuff that maybe I wouldn’t have even expected us to pull out of our hat,” he responded. “We’ve got a song that’s like the heaviest blues song on earth, and stuff like that that’s super exciting to hear what the guys are doing. Then, once we’re working on the instrumental for a while, then we get to hear what Corey [Taylor] brings to the table and how that elevates things and turns things into newer and better and whatever… It’s very exciting to hear that kind of taking shape.
“But, man, there’s so much in it that is trademark SLIPKNOT,” he continued. “We’re not gonna get away from that; we can’t escape that even if we wanted to. There are certain things that are just touchstones of what we are, and I think we’re really happy with that. And the fact that we can try to find new ways of presenting those elements — the loud, the fast, the abrasive, the discordant, all that is there for sure. And that’s really exciting. I think [last year’s single] ‘The Chapeltown Rag’ is a great example of that. I think that’s a song that’s us kind of at peak energy and chaos. But what also really excites me is the way that we push things in experimental ways without questioning it. It’s just kind of, like, ‘This is what we wanna do. And people can take it or leave it. We don’t really care.’
“Like on our last record, ‘Spiders’ was a great example of a song that is totally out of no playbook of SLIPKNOT‘s, but we make it SLIPKNOT. I think now that we’re kind of in this final stage of mixing this album, I think I’m confident in saying that we just kind of turned up the dials on all that experimentation. And there’s some really, really new stuff that’s super exciting. And I hope it makes its way onto the stage soon. It’s gonna be exciting to share.”
When asked how songs come together during the SLIPKNOT writing process, Jay responded: “In a myriad of ways. There’s really no one set formula for anything that happens. I think the one thing that we can all expect when we embark on making a new album — ’cause it takes so much, it takes so much time and energy and thought — the one thing, I think, that we try to maintain is that each process is pretty different. We wanna push ourselves, and the only way you’re gonna push yourself is to change it up, make yourself uncomfortable in situations so you can become comfortable in those situations. And so I think pushing what we do to the extreme — you wanna kind of level up, for lack of a better term, each time you kind of go back to the drawing table.”
“Now, after [making] three records [with SLIPKNOT], I know there are certain patterns of the way that we work together and our musical chemistry and the trust that’s there,” Jay continued. “‘Cause we’re all kind of trusting each other to make the greatest thing possible. So that could start with a lyric, it could start with a guitar riff, it could start with a drum beat, it could start with something that Sid [Wilson, turntablist] pulls from outer space. There’s a million different ways to go about it.
“My first record with the band, [.5:] The Gray Chapter [2014], was very much like… I’m very proud of it, but I can tell in it, it was a lot of getting up to speed and really feeling out my new bandmates. ‘Cause I joined the band and literally the next day we were working on demos for that record. Then so much of it is informed by our live show. I find that when we went in to make We Are Not Your Kind, so much of what we were doing was informed by how our natural musical chemistry is and how we are on stage, really, I feel, made it into that record.
“And then making this record, I think, was kind of just following more down that wormhole. And working with new people. This time around, we were able to work with [producer] Joe Barresi, which was an exciting time. I loved working with Greg Fidelman, who did our last two records, but working with Joe this time was different and a lot of fun. And yeah, the creation is just so thorough and it takes so much of all of us. It’s so much more than I could have ever expected, being an outsider of the band and now having made three records. It’s a gnarly experience that tests everybody, but I think the music, at the end of the day, kind of speaks for itself. And we’re very happy with it.”
