SLIPKNOT has set "We Are Not Your Kind" as the title of its new album, due on August 9 via Roadrunner. Today the band has shared the album's first single "Unsainted", which is available at all DSPs along with an official music video. Directed by the band's own M. Shawn Crahan, the "Unsainted" video, and the track itself, offer a glimpse at the future of one of rock's most popular, and deeply enigmatic bands.
Guitarist Jim Root noted: "This is most time we've had to write a record, and work stuff out together. One of my inspirations this time around was those artists that recorded full length albums — not just songs. While the industry is moving toward singles, SLIPKNOT wanted to make an album experience, front to back."
"We Are Not Your Kind" is available for pre-order today with exclusive bundles available at Slipknot1.com. The disc was once again recorded at a Los Angeles studio with producer Greg Fidelman, who engineered and mixed SLIPKNOT's 2004 album "Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses)" and helmed 2014's ".5: The Gray Chapter".
"These days the art we are making comes with the highest reward, because it's taken the most time," added Crahan. "Almost four years to create this emotion and temperature, and the reward now is nothing short of salvation."
SLIPKNOT's sixth album does not include the song "All Out Life", which was released last October. The track's accompanying video was also directed by Crahan.
Singer Corey Taylor recently said that "All Out Life" is not representative of the type of music fans can expect to hear on SLIPKNOT's long-awaited new LP. "It's a great tune, it's a heavy tune, but it's not a good representation of the darkness that is involved with the music," he told 95.5 KLOS's Full Metal Jackie. "We are taking some really cool risks musically. We're dipping into some evil we haven't played with in a long time, let's put it that way. It's got little hints of everything we've ever done, but it's got some of the heaviest stuff we've ever done as well."
Asked what it was like for him to go back to some of those darker lyrical themes, Taylor said: "It's been very cathartic. I've got a lot I've gotta say and a lot I wanna say, and this feels like the right time to do it."
Some of SLIPKNOT's new album also deals with Taylor's depression that led to a divorce and forced him to "figure out who I was" without relapsing into substance abuse.
"All I was doing was giving and I found myself absolutely, completely tapped," he told the Des Moines Register. "You could see it in my skin. You could see it in my eyes. That's basically the journey I'm going to take people on this album … show them what happens to depression when you have no chemicals to fall back on."
".5: The Gray Chapter" was released following a six-year hiatus during which founding SLIPKNOT bassist Paul Gray died and drummer Joey Jordison was dismissed.
SLIPKNOT's "Knotfest Roadshow" headline tour will take place in North America this summer. VOLBEAT, GOJIRA and BEHEMOTH will join as special guests on all dates.
Produced by Live Nation, the 29-city outing will kick off July 26 in Mountain View, California at Shoreline Amphitheater and continue through September 8 where it will conclude with a performance at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands, Texas.
