“The End, So Far” has been somewhat divisive amongst the fan base of the nine-masked metal musicians collectively known as Slipknot. An intended step into the unexpected, fan discussions about the seventh studio from the the multi-platinum extremists have remained somewhat heated since its release.
Speaking recently with NME, the band’s ever-outspoken frontman Corey Taylor, admitted that pushing the envelope is something the group relish in doing:
“We’ve always been experimental… Everybody just assumes that we’re heavy all the fucking time. We do have moments of blasts and brilliance, but at the same time, we have songs like ‘Circle‘. We also have songs like ‘Snuff‘. When people hear [the new album], they go, ‘Well, that’s a departure.’ It’s like, ‘What are you, fucking new?’ We’ve spent 20-plus years throwing people for a loop.”
In more recent years, any new output coming from the band has often stacked up against their chart-topping, platinum-certified 2001 record “Iowa“. It’s a comparison that has been repeatedly nurtured by the band, with Taylor once describing the early material constructed for “We Are Not Your Kind” as “‘Iowa‘ levels of heavy.” Taylor would later go on to walk back those comments.
The summer of 2021 once again saw “Iowa” brought up, this time when describing the material that would ultimately become “The End, So Far“. That time around, it was percussionist M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan stating that the record would be similar to that vaunted 2001 opus.
Speaking to NME in this latest feature about being haunted by the legacy of “Iowa“, Taylor offered:
“One of the problems about writing one of the heaviest fucking albums of all time is that people just expect you to do that over and over. Well, fuck, that’s so boring. If we had done that, we wouldn’t be where we are today, 100 per cent.”
He later added:
“You also have to remember a large part of the population are also people who have created petitions against every Batman that has ever been fucking cast in a movie, and they’ve always been wrong. Who’s really right here? You fucking idiots, sometimes you just need to shut the fuck up and listen to what we give you.”
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