THEY ARE NOT YOUR KIND
“I am amazed I can stand up most of the time,” Slipknot guitarist Jim Root sighs. “Three of us have had neck or back surgery now. One day we will just be gone. That’s how I’d like it. No final tour, no announcement, no big drama. We’ll just vanish and never come back, and you’ll forever be left wondering if Slipknot is even still a thing.”
After 20 years of turning music into war, two decades of catharsis, pain and destruction, it’s only natural to wonder just how long metal’s most combustible of bands can last. Many of us never even expected to see a day when we’d hear a second or third Slipknot album. But, as we sit on the phone to Jim while he’s backstage at Germany’s Rock Im Park festival, where the band are on the second date of their mammoth European and US run, we’re on the verge of hearing their sixth, released on August 9 and titled We Are Not Your Kind.
Chaos has always followed Slipknot around but, from the outside looking in, the waters seem particularly choppy right now. The last time the nine were an active proposition was at the end of the touring cycle for 2014’s , an album that was more melodic and melancholic than previous Slipknot releases – understandable given that the record was essentially a tribute and expression of grief to much-missed bassist Paul Gray. As good as those songs were in their own right, though, once the dust had settled questions from the metal community started to arise: was the fire that made Slipknot one of the heaviest bands of their generation extinguishing? Had the band become a dictatorship led by Corey? With Paul and beloved drummer Joey Jordison, two of the men that played such a huge
