As Slipknot emerge, re-masked and re-energised, into a new album cycle, Jake Longhurst gives his thoughts on their new single.
OK action stations everybody, new Slipknot music has dropped and it’s time to crack out the neck braces for all your metalhead friends. With their album The End, So Far announced for September 30th, and the second single released all of 30 minutes before I started writing this document, the metal world is in glorious uproar as the globe-conquering behemoth of Slipknot churns into motion once more to give us what will surely be one of the best albums this year.
The new song is called The Dying Song (Time To Sing) and features a style very reminiscent of the Halloween 2018 release All Out Life, with the heavy syncopated riff and aggressive verse vocals, but has the more melodic chorus vocals of Unsainted, making this a brilliant blend of two of Slipknot's most recent sounds. The chorus has Corey Taylor repeat the line “Put your hands into the water, let your mouth go sick and dry, put your life into your death now, let them sing until you die” which is custom built for the monumental crowds that Slipknot command wherever they go and will surely become an instant feature in the band’s live show.
"...a three pronged attack on various forms of percussion that is very comparable to an artillery bombardment..."
Alongside these lyrics are the buzzsaw guitars of Jim Root and Mick Thomson, who share a solo midway through that eerily reminds me somewhat of the criminally underrated song Spiders off of their last LP We Are Not Your Kind from 2019, as this solo shares the same sense of creepiness and foreboding , but for the rest of the song they are on fine riffing form, and Alessandro Venturella backs them up brilliantly on bass guitar, thundering along below the melody. Jay Weinberg, Shawn Crahan and Michael Pfaff (Tortilla Man to most) provide a three pronged attack on various forms of percussion that is very comparable to an artillery bombardment, and Sid Wilson’s DJ skills are back into the mix much more than on previous records, which is always a welcome return for me!
Craig Jones is also back into the fold some more, his sampling skills pairing up nicely with Sid Wilson, who appears to be debuting a new mask in the video released alongside the track. As longtime fans of the band (or Maggots as they are affectionately known) will be aware, the band update their masks each album cycle, and we’ve already seen plenty of the new masks, from Corey, Michael, Sid, Jay, and Shawn, but hopefully we don’t have long to wait on the mask releases for some of the other members.
So whilst this is only one song released, the news of a new album and all the trimmings that come with it is enormous. I can assure you that if you need me you may have to tap on my shoulder and ask me to take my headphones out, because I will have this on repeat for weeks. Slipknot are finally back, baby.
Jake Longhurst
Edited by: Caradoc Gayer
In article photo and cover image courtesy of Slipknot via Facebook.
Comments