Slipknot Unleash First New Song in Two Years ‘The Chapeltown Rag’

Slipknot have surprise-released new song “The Chapeltown Rag” at midnight on Thursday. It’s their first new song in two years and it’s slated to appear on their upcoming album. The release date and LP title have not been announced.

The song’s lyrics take on internet culture head-on: “When everything is God online, nothing is,” Corey Taylor belts in a repeated refrain.

“It’s a punisher, man. It’s classic Slipknot. And it’s frenetic,” Taylor said in a statement. “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.”

Shawn Crahan, also known as Clown from Slipknot, added: “‘The Chapeltown Rag’ facilitates a sort of mindset that you’re going to like: it’s along the barnburner side of things.”

The group performed “The Chapeltown Rag” live for the first time during Knotfest in Los Angeles at the Banc of California Stadium, during their first-ever livestream earlier in the night. Their upcoming LP will be the follow-up to 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, which featured the single “Birth of the Cruel.”