What is Slipknot’s New Song ‘The Chapeltown Rag’ About?

Slipknot's unrelenting-bullet-train-of-a-new-single "The Chapeltown Rag" dropped last week to the delight of maggots all over the net.  Some of their reactions were "pure banger" and "It’s all every Slipknot album in one song" and "that new slipknot song has no right to go this hard holy shit."

But the title of "The Chapeltown Rag" isn't exactly a widely known pop, or metal, culture reference. So what is the song about? In an interview with Knotfest, Corey Taylor breaks it down.

Taylor watched a Netflix documentary called The Ripper, about a serial killer plaguing Northern England in the late '70s. Chapeltown, a suburb in the city of Leeds in West Yorkshire, was the hunting ground for Peter Sutcliffe, who became known as the "Yorkshire Ripper."

After he completed it, Netflix recommended another serial killer documentary for Taylor, and he watched that, and then another, going down the proverbial rabbit hole.

As the story goes, the local newspaper (or rag) in Chapeltown leaned on the theory by the lead detective on the case that the Ripper was choosing prostitutes or wayward women as his victims. As such, the search for the Ripper delved into the moral failings of the murdered women as opposed to the motivations of the killer.

The case was famously bungled.  Over the 5 year investigation, the police brought in and interviewed Sutcliffe nine times before they had enough evidence to arrest him and bring him to trial.  Taylor relates this to a modern problem with the media."They wasted all this time," sighs Taylor. "All this money, all these resources – all because they refused to be wrong. Now what does that sound like in this day and age?"

"And it was just such a weird echo of social media. And the fact that social media tries to steer you toward violence or steer you toward the most toxic thing – the most toxic moment. So I looked at it from that standpoint.’"

The song goes through the manipulations of the mainstream media as they course through the filters of social media and get even more distorted. The song documents the inevitable plunge of the truth into something unrecognizable.

Read the lyrics to "The Chapeltown Rag" below and you'll get the gist.

Slipknot's "The Chapeltown Rag" Lyrics

Read all about it if you wanna know… Read all about what they want you to know

EVERYTHING IS GOD ONLINE… and it's as evil as it gets
This is not another trick: either Follow or Repent
(NO CHOICE) get infected by a vertical event- check the meter, check the watch
Are they ever gonna stop?
Runnin out of daylight, Nighttime's better
But we know how to handle the truth motherfucker
Scandalous know it all- feedback chamber
Nobody wants the proof- they want a number
WE DON'T DENY WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR LIVES
WE CAN'T DECIDE WHAT IS LEFT OF OUR RIGHT TO SILENCE OUR REMAINS
…Buried in the back and I'm sick and alive …Hollow as a breath, the further you dive

You're Gonna Need a New Disguise-Vessels Burst, Veins Release
Just Slide Into The Nearest Lie

All the ligatures are getting tight, like a style
Murder another mouth before the trial
Scalpel and then you scalp em to fucking death
Kills for the other vampires and surrogates
It's a ploy for attention and evidence
All your fucking monsters are flaws in your common sense
Do the dance while the shovels are breaking dirt
Everybody mind your fuckin business or you get hurt

WE DON'T DENY WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR LIVES
WE CAN'T DECIDE WHAT IS LEFT OF OUR RIGHT TO SILENCE OUR REMAINS
…Buried in the back and I'm sick and alive …Hollow as a breath, the further you dive

Oh, How I Missed Your Namaste-You Never Miss With Your Integrity
You're Gonna Need a New Disguise-Vessels Burst, Veins Release
Just Slide Into The Nearest Lie

Read all about it if you wanna know… (Everything Is God Online) 

Stoned- like a Beast- on a Chain- Lookin Dead- Feelin Strange- What the Fuck-
I'm Material to sew into the stains- like a catalogue of pain- like a martyr in restraints- I can kill- with a will- and it's stronger every day- I'm a knife- I'm a gun- I'm a slit- I'm a scar- I'm a scream- I'm a death- I'm a threat- I'm afraid- that you will never understand I'm not the same- you better call the triple 9 I want a face- that you can only recognize I'm afraid- I'm afraid- I'm afraid- I'm afraid…

WHEN EVERYTHING IS GOD ONLINE… NOTHING IS

Intense.

Although we haven't heard anything else from the upcoming album, in the same article Clown foreshadows it as "sort of scary to me. It’s very sad. And yet it’s not sad. I don’t think there’s anything sad in it. But it comes off as sad to me.’"