Over the course of their two-decade career, Iowa heavy metallers Slipknot have stayed so laser-focused on their modus operandi – channeling messy anger into face-melting rock songs while dressed in jumpsuits and pungent-looking Halloween masks – that they’ve become essentially impervious to music’s changing tides. Their last three albums all topped the US Billboard charts, while the accompanying tour for next month’s seventh album, The End, So Far, finds the octet playing arenas everywhere from the Czech Republic to Brazil.
Mainstream success hasn’t quelled their ability to cause controversy, however. The End, So Far – rumoured to be their final album on long-term label Roadrunner – was heralded late last year by frenetic single The Chapeltown Rag. Written by frontman Corey Taylor – or #8, to give him his original Slipknot ident – the song references serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, its title taken from an area in Leeds where Sutcliffe murdered a 16-year-old girl. Taylor, who also fronts hard rock band Stone Sour sans mask, said the song was: “talking about the various manipulations that can happen when social media meets media itself.”
