We Are Not Your Kind
We Are Not Your Kind is the sixth studio album by American heavy metal band Slipknot. Recorded at EastWest Studios in Hollywood, California with co-producer Greg Fidelman, it was released on August 9, 2019, by Roadrunner Records. The title is taken from a lyric in the song "All Out Life", which was released as a standalone single in 2018 and features as a bonus track on the Japanese edition of the album. We Are Not Your Kind is the only Slipknot album to be recorded as an eight-member band, as their former percussionist Chris Fehn was fired from the band in March 2019 after suing the group for alleged unpaid royalties.
After the conclusion of the touring cycle for .5: The Gray Chapter, Slipknot guitarist Jim Root and percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan began writing and demoing material for the band's follow-up album in early 2017. According to Crahan, the group wrote and recorded a total of 22 songs and 26 interludes, with the plan initially being to produce the band's first double album. Recording began in November 2018, shortly after the release of the standalone single "All Out Life". The album was completed by April 2019 and "Unsainted" was released as the lead single the next month. This was followed by "Solway Firth" in July, "Birth of the Cruel" in August and "Nero Forte" in December.
We Are Not Your Kind received critical acclaim; numerous commentators hailed the album as one of the best releases of Slipknot's career, praising the level of experimentation displayed on several key songs. Others highlighted it as a modern landmark release in the heavy metal genre. "Unsainted" reached number 10 on the US Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, while "Solway Firth" also reached the UK Rock & Metal Singles Chart top ten. We Are Not Your Kind debuted at number 1 on the US Billboard 200, becoming the band's third consecutive album to do so on both charts, as well as several other charts around the world.
Background and writing
Work on Slipknot's sixth studio album began in February 2017, when the band's guitarist Jim Root and percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan started writing new material together. Speaking to Rolling Stone in November 2016, Crahan simply stated that "we want to write", but that a recording timeline would remain unconfirmed for the time being. He later elaborated on this plan by claiming that the group's members wanted to take their time working on new songs, rather than producing it within a set timeframe as they had done before. Plans for the direction of the album had been touted by the percussionist as early as the summer of 2015, when he claimed that he wanted to write an "art record" in the vein of The Wall by Pink Floyd or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, likely in the form of a double album with an overall concept and numerous interludes. Several song ideas also came from rough demos tracked during the previous tour, with Crahan estimating that the band had "hundreds of ideas".By August 2017, Crahan estimated that the writing process had spawned "about 27 pieces of work" so far. In an interview with the NME, he added that "A lot of us are meeting up in September to start working on those 27 pieces of music and we're going to add to that," reasserting his desire to make a double album. Following up with Metal Hammer in October, Crahan revealed that he had been working with Root and drummer Jay Weinberg on organizing the material written during the previous touring cycle, which combined with new material resulted in "seven or eight" full song ideas. Much of the initial writing process took place without the band's frontman Corey Taylor, who spent 2017 recording and touring in promotion of Hydrograd, the sixth album by his other band Stone Sour. The vocalist began writing lyrics for three new songs in early 2018, which he claimed would be based on events in his life over the last few years. By April, Taylor claimed that he had completed lyrics for "almost all" of the band's new music.
Recording and production
After almost two years of writing, Shawn Crahan revealed that recording for Slipknot's sixth album would begin in November 2018. The full band later joined the percussionist in January 2019. Production was handled again by Greg Fidelman, who engineered and mixed 2004's Vol. 3: , and produced 2014's .5: The Gray Chapter and the 2018 single "All Out Life". Speaking about working with the producer, vocalist Corey Taylor credited Fidelman with his contributions to their previous releases and noted that "He gets us, he challenges us... we have a great relationship with him". It was initially suggested in the media that Ross Robinson, who worked with the band on 1999's Slipknot and 2001's Iowa, would be producing the album, however this rumor was quickly dismissed by guitarist Jim Root. The recording of We Are Not Your Kind was completed by April 2019, when turntablist Sid Wilson revealed that he was "laying the last" of his parts on the album.Speaking to British retailer HMV about the album's recording process, Root recalled that the band spent a lot of time working on initial arrangements for the new material, explaining that "We spent all the time on the demos. We built them and let them evolve." This allowed the band to "step back" from recordings and revisit them later, leading to what the guitarist described as an "organic" outcome. However, he added that the final tracking process was "a big challenge", lamenting that "I wish we'd had that time to actually record the album." Root also distinguished the approach on We Are Not Your Kind from its predecessor .5: The Gray Chapter; he recalled that for the 2014 release " songs came straight from my garage and they don't have the push and pull of a live band," contrasting the recording of its follow-up by explaining that "we were playing the songs as a band and tracked them with and without a click track. The ones without click are the ones that we used on the record."
Due to the amount of time spent writing and recording demos for the album, there are many tracks from the We Are Not Your Kind sessions which remain unreleased. According to Crahan, the band recorded a total of 22 songs and 26 interludes for the album, with many shelved in favor of stronger tracks. Before the album's release, the percussionist revealed to Kerrang! magazine that "There's another 15 songs that didn't make the cut", estimating that "there's at least seven or eight songs that are recorded, with vocals, that did not make this album." Speaking on music streaming service Spotify's Metal Talks podcast, Crahan explained that when choosing what songs to include on an album, he tries to "picture as a fan in the world that we live in today". He went on to say that this line of thinking is what ultimately led to the exclusion of "All Out Life" from the album, claiming that he believed fans would prefer to hear a new song in place of one that was already available to stream.
Composition and lyrics
Musically, We Are Not Your Kind has been described as nu metal, alternative metal, groove metal, extreme metal and hard rock. It has been recognized by commentators and band members as one of the most experimental albums of Slipknot's career. The album features moody instrumentals and has elements of electronic, progressive rock, electronic rock, rap metal, and electro-industrial. During a pre-release interview with Daniel P. Carter on the BBC Radio 1 Rock Show, Corey Taylor claimed that "it is probably the furthest we've pushed the boundaries of creativity and experimentation," adding that "We not only went places that we've hinted at musically over the years, but never really went full-board, but we're also doing heavier things than we've ever done." Emily Carter of Kerrang! described it as "the 'Knot's most experimental album to date," NME writer Jordan Bassett called it "Slipknot at their artiest", and Roisin O'Connor of The Independent claimed that "The sheer ambition of We Are Not Your Kind is just as staggering as their seminal record Iowa". Several critics highlighted "Spiders" as one of the most avant-garde songs on the album, on which "creepy piano tinklings" and "scattershot drum beats" are favored over the more commonly used low-end guitar riffs.Another quality of We Are Not Your Kind touted in the build-up to its release was the heaviness of the music. As early as June 2018, Taylor claimed that their sixth album would be "Iowa levels of heavy". He later reiterated the suggestion, claiming that the album contains one of the heaviest songs of their career. Sam Taylor of the Financial Times admitted that the band "weren't bluffing" when making such claims, suggesting that the album "often verges on the attritional". Similarly, Gigwise writer Anna Smith suggested that We Are Not Your Kind featured "some of the heaviest material since eponymous debut". Reviewing the album for the website Blabbermouth.net, Jay H. Gorania praised the band's attempts at being heavy on We Are Not Your Kind – describing their first two albums, Gorania opined that "Slipknot seemed as though they were trying to be the heaviest band on the market and trying too hard," before concluding that "When they are in overdrive nowadays, however, it feels more authentic and expressive."
According to Taylor, We Are Not Your Kind features some of his most personal lyrics to date. During the writing process, the band's frontman explained that "It's been a heavy couple of years for me personally. I've been able to kind of grab hold of some of the depression that I've been fighting and kind of formulate the way that I want to describe it." Early on in the process, he claimed that "It's probably the most autobiographical I've been in years", describing the lyrical content as "dark... really dark". One of the main influences on Taylor's lyrics was his separation from then-wife Stephanie Luby in 2016; in an interview with Loudwire, he explained that "The narrative really came from me working my way through the repercussions of a really toxic relationship. And the fallout that came with finally extricating myself from that relationship." Another major influence on the album's lyrical content is that of global "divisiveness", which Taylor claims is fueled by US President Donald Trump through "bigotry" and "racism".