When Slipknot roared back last October with epic single All Out Life, we all assumed that their first new music since 2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter would also end up on a new studio album.
However, after the ’Knot announced new full-length We Are Not Your Kind and its 14-song tracklist earlier in the month, Maggots quickly noticed that All Out Life actually wouldn't be included. According to frontman Corey Taylor, though, there's a good reason for this: the band simply wanted to remind fans with All Out Life that they were still here.
“[All Out Life isn't on the album] from a standpoint of it was kind of its own thing that really just let people know that we weren’t gone, and that we were still looking forward and working on music,” the vocalist explains to Kerrang!. “It was just such a catchy song that it made sense to release it. But now, in context with the story that we’re telling [on We Are Not Your Kind], we weren’t sure if we were going to put it on there.”
Of course, the single's ‘We are not your kind’ chant eventually spawned the title for Slipknot's new album – something that Corey wasn't expecting.
“I didn’t think it would be anything more than a great chant at a concert,” he tells Kerrang! in our world-exclusive cover feature. “It was one of the things in my head that I could hear 50,000 people screaming at the top of their lungs, pumping fists. It wasn’t so much that I thought it was benign or anything – it was definitely something that I thought, ‘This could be something really cool’ – but it took on a life of its own, and that’s when I really started thinking about the phrase; about how it could be perceived.”