ROLLING WITH the chaos

JIM ROOT AND MICK THOMSON DO A DEEP DIVE INTO THE MAKING OF THE END, SO FAR THE SETBACKS, THE DEPRESSION, THE WILD GEAR EXPERIMENTS, THE WHAMMY-BAR HIJINKS AND MORE

- JON WIEDERHORN

FOR MANY BANDS THAT wrote albums during the pandemic lockdown, having extra time to compose and experiment was a bittersweet bonus. It allowed them to try new techniques, then revisit and fine-tune songs months after they were first tracked. Artists had the flexibility to upgrade their home studios and record in multiple locations. Fiddling while Rome burned provided a temporary escape from a decaying world and an outlet to funnel their anger and frustration. All good things in a tragic and frightening time.

Listening to Slipknot's seventh studio album, The End, So Far, suggests the nine-piece wrecking machine benefited from such a chance to explore a wide range of musical options, from moody and melodic elegies to vicious and chaotic tirades. Throughout the record, ambient, effect-laden sounds collide with chuggy, down-tuned riffs and tempos reel from sluggish to torrential, often in the same song. Like their last album, 2019's We Are Not Your Kind, atmospheric interstitials are bookended by a schizophrenic hybrid of pop hooks, raging riffs and enough rhythmic variation to bewilder and enthrall.

"We're not just five guys up there playing metal songs like, say, Anthrax, Exodus or Testament. There's so much more going on," says guitarist Jim Root of Slipknot's sawed-off-shotgun-to-the-head approach. "There's orchestration going on with [keyboardist] Sid [Wilson] and [DJ and sampler] Craig [Jones]. There's melodic vocals and screaming and piano and samples and all these layers and music styles."