White Supremacist Band Slipknot Release New Album (Click-Bait is Click-Stupid, A**)

In one of the most divisive weeks in modern American history, musicians once again fail to save the day (particularly Slipknot, Tool, and Taylor Swift) (to clarify: white supremacists do exist, they are not cool, and they represent a major part of a very serious situation in America right now; Slipknot, Taylor Swift, nor Tool are white supremacists, as far as current available information may provide).

8/9/19, 8:24 pm EDT

By John Corry. photo from Metal Injection and Roadrunner Records

Say what you will, but Slipknot’s a thing (are they?). Their sound is at least close to instantly recognizable (for better or ill, depending on who you are), and their live shows are fun as fuck (completely unbiased). Their records have shown a consistent willingness to grow, yet have lost no natural capability to maintain that original sound. Just because you might not like something, doesn’t mean somebody else shouldn’t /> so long as that something isn’t calling for violence or an outdated ideology spouting a self-delusional materialist philosophy only relevant before the advent of the Beatles (joke(ish)) (combined objective/subjective analysis from new understanding by rapid industrialization’s impact on understanding emotions begot from, in this case, music), let alone before WWI, evolution, or Descartes.

We Are Not Your Kind, Slipknot’s sixth release in twenty-four years together, was released today, following three singles and a week filled with haters, liars, and people just generally acting like tools (burn on the people discussed in that link, not the person who made it). It’s been well received; following the death of founding member and main songwriter Paul Grey in 2010, and the exit of drummer Joey Jordison in 2013, the band’s previous record (before WANYK), .5: The Grey Chapter, was a bit redundant and all-over-the-place (obviously– not without justified reason; that’s a primarily my opinion, though I’m not alone in it). We Are Not Your Kind, upon first listen, and obviously if you’re into Slipknot, is cool; it’s consistent, it has everything you’d want of a Slipknot record, but still feels fresh, and it even manages to get experimental, involving haunting John Carpenter-esque keyboard lines (see that video above), and relatively rare odd times signatures (like: they’re not Meshuggah, that’s not offensive).

It comes at the end of week in which another major event–the release of Tool’s first new song in over a decade–graced our ears in the middle of an otherwise terrible week in which two very publicized mass shootings occurred, and in which everyone in public media has decided that there is no longer any difference whatever between liberals and crazy people, politics and the rest of life (like music, video games, family, or love, for example), or white supremacists and people who simply recognize that there indeed are bad people out there, be they white supremacists, teenage kids on 8Chan (emphasis on ‘teenage kids’ (because teenagers’ brains are obviously just as developed as adults’, or gamers, or metalheads)), or people encouraging violence on Twitter.

And, in case you’re wondering, yes: last week’s Taylor Swift song was pretty awesome too (haters).

Music transcends politics because actual, physical vibrations in air transcend humans. They were here long before, and will be here long after, us. Family and love transcend music because, insofar as music is the conscious putting-together of physical vibrations to create meaning for consciousness in-time, family and love are not only influenced by those physical vibrations, but also by light, and by a conscious understanding of time outside of space, in that family and love are innately connected to other humans on an intellectual level, and not just one based on the fact that we can all listen to this same thing at the same time or whatever.

When politics–or, rather: when a people using politics as a motivating factor beyond that of the capacity of music, family, or love–tries to transcend at a level higher, reason dictates–given that that is not how that hierarchy works (music, family and love transcend politics) (if you want to talk about a ‘power hierarchy’, that’s a different hierarchy than the one which may allow an individual (powerful solely for its own sake and only in certain moments, as the idea that all moments come down to one thing is the idea that ‘all moments come down to (any) one thing’ ad infinitum (as ‘the moment’ is not categorical); a completely separate thought than that regarding any collective consciousness) to transcend time)–that chaos must ensue. If there is no point in getting all butthurt over the fact that somebody else likes a song or a band, there’s no point in getting butthurt over her politics– again: until those politics become synonymous with something (in time and space, and not just one or the other) like music, or family, or love.

If you don’t like Slipknot, will I get over it? Yes (Tool is so much better, anyway), but will you?????