9 Things We Want From The New Slipknot Album

As Slipknot come ever closer to releasing album number six, the Kerrang! office is drooling over what could be the best metal album of the year. Will it be heavy? Will it be fast? Will it come with a free dead crow? We just don't know. But we have been thinking long and hard about what we want from the record, and the two biggest maggots at Kerrang! HQ have put their thoughts down on digital paper below. No doubt you'll agree and there will be no arguing in the comments whatsoever.

Let’s just get this out the way now: Slipknot’s All Hope Is Gone get-up is by far their greatest. Sure, Corey Taylor’s dreads poking out his self-titled era mask are badass, and the Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) look is suitably creepy, but The Nine looked beyond cool in 2008. And we’d really like to see more of that a decade later. With acclaimed horror artist Tom Savini giving Corey a helping hand on his mask this time around, we can probably expect their new look to be equal parts awesome and disgusting. Perfect.

Away from the Psychosocials and Wait And Bleeds which still get played at every decent rock night, Slipknot are also masters of the esoteric, twisted scores that haunt your senses. Like album closers Scissors on the debut or Iowa’s title-track, when The Nine are able to experiment with emotions and sounds, away from a strict verse-chorus structure, they’re at their most inspiring. These masked men aren’t just violence-mongers wanting you to sit down then jump up again, their musical ambition and fearless attitude is something their peers rarely touch upon. Lock Clown and Craig Jones in a room to come up with something truly sinister, a 10-minute odyssey through a tortured psyche, and we’ll be laughing (or crying).

While the ’Knot have developed a penchant for the meatier song in recent records, with most tracks on All Hope Is Gone and .5: The Gray Chapter somewhere between the four and six-minute mark, we just want a track to go fucking ballistic to. Like Get This on the debut album, we want The Nine to come out with all 18 middle fingers in the air and kick seven shades out of themselves for two-and-a-half minutes. No reprise, no slow bit, no solo, just bone-shattering carnage that leaves us in a bloody pulp on the floor.

Whether it’s famously trashing a house and costing up to half a million dollars in damages for Duality, blowing themselves up with bombs and dynamite for The Devil In I, or performing in pyro-filled fields in Psychosocial, Slipknot’s best videos all contain one key element: breaking and/or setting fire to shit. So if this next record cycle could bring out Clown’s destructive side even more, then that’d be just swell.

This might be a controversial choice as Snuff is by far one of Slipknot’s most popular songs (with a whopping 93 million plays on YouTube at the time of writing), but if All Out Life proved one thing to maggots everywhere, it’s that we love it when Corey busts a gut screaming his massive neck to pieces. And with him promising us that album six will be “Iowa levels of heavy”, hopefully we’re in for more New Abortions and I Am Hateds to pound our heads to.

Arguably Slipknot’s greatest song – we’re looking at you, Eyeless – begins with DJ extraordinare and stage-diving master Sid Wilson scratching away at his turntable, and we’d really like to hear a whole load more of that on album number six, please. Comeback single All Out Life has a hint of #0 doing what he does best over Jim Root and Mick Thomson’s ever-brilliant riffs, but we need more turntable madness. Seriously, we cannot stress this enough.

On their last album cycle, Slipknot stepped up their production like never before. No longer were they just some masked dudes who brought a bit of fire with them, but the whole stage was redesigned like a demonic carnival, with a devilish figure looming overhead. The various platforms gave ample room for Corey to stomp around stage like a man possessed, while Chris Fehn and Clown's drum risers lifted them up into the rafters throughout. And there was fire. Basically, wherever you looked, something bonkers was happening. AND WE WANT MORE OF THAT, PLEASE. Last year Iron Maiden’s Legacy Of The Beast tour proved what was possible in an arena setting, with constant changing of stages and props, and Metallica’s current stadium production is spectacular, so surely Clown is planning something mind-manglingly terrifying and impressive to send maggots into spasm. Maybe a goat sacrifice every night?

‘Due to the prolific nature of this statement / Listener aggression is advised…’ warns Corey Taylor in the introduction of .5: The Gray Chapter’s most crushing track, and boy oh boy, do the ’Knot deliver here. More songs where we can drunkenly punch the air while yelling ‘Cut cut cut me up and fuck fuck fuck me up’ would definitely not go amiss. After all, angry Slipknot is the best kind of Slipknot.

Let's be real here: there is just something so satisfying and joyful about that 'ting' sound of Clown battering solid metal with a baseball bat. Like Killswitch with their pinched harmonics and Architects with their signature ‘bleh!’, this is Slipknot’s calling card, and we need to hear it again at maximum volume.

Words: Luke Morton and Emily Carter

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Catch Slipknot at one of the below shows this year. Get your UK tickets now.

June

7-8 Hyvinkää Rockfest
7-9 Nuremberg Rock Im Park
7-9 Nürburg Rock Am Ring
13-15 Nickelsdorf Novarock
13-16 Interlaken Greenfield
14-16 Derby Download Festival
17 Leipzig Arena
18 Hannover TUI Arena
19-22 Copenhagen CopenHell
21-23 Dessel Graspop
25-26 Krakow Mystic Festival
27 Bologna Sonic Park
28-30 Madrid Download Festival

July

1 Nîmes Amphitheatre
3-6 Lisbon VOA
4-5 Viveiro Resurrection Fest