SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root has confirmed that "Arsenal", the band's first new song in over three years, will not appear on the album they are currently making — and that it is "not really representative" of what the rest of that record sounds like.
Root answered a fan in the comment section of a since-deleted Instagram post, after being asked whether the criticism of the song bothered him. "It depends on the commenter, really," he wrote. "I mean, what's their band doing?" He then set out the song's status plainly: "'Arsenal' was a tune we could quickly get out there while we work on the rest of the record. It's not really representative of the other tunes." Asked directly whether the single would be on the album, he replied: "No. This was just one that we could finish 'sooner' to get out there."
The reaction to "Arsenal" has been split since it landed this week with a video directed by M. Shawn "Clown" Crahan, with a section of the fanbase calling it a departure and taking particular aim at the chorus, in which Corey Taylor chants "Let's go, let's go, let's go".
Taylor's own description of the track, given to Jack Saunders when the song premiered in the "Hottest Record" slot on BBC Radio 1's "New Music Show", was rather more enthusiastic. "It pummels. It is absolutely a pummeling experience," he said. "One of my favorite things about it is it kind of encapsulates everything that we do. It's got these great moments of hyperactivity, and then at the end, man, there's this sublime drop that just makes it. It's like we've got everyone by the hair, and we're just going, 'Go! Go!' That, to me, sums up SLIPKNOT completely."
The single carries a lot of firsts regardless of where it ends up. It is SLIPKNOT's first new music since the 2023 standalone "Bone Church", the first since the departures of longtime members Sid Wilson and Craig Jones, the first with Eloy Casagrande on drums in place of Jay Weinberg to be released as a studio recording, and the first release on the band's own (sic)est Records following the end of a two-and-a-half-decade deal with Roadrunner.
The coming album will follow 2022's "The End, So Far", which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart and No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and topped the charts in the UK, Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Mexico. Last autumn the band sold its catalogue to HarbourView Equity Partners in a deal covering publishing and recording masters royalties for the archival catalogue — reportedly not extending to future releases.