Slipknot's New Song, 'The Chapeltown Rag,' Was Inspired by the 'Yorkshire Ripper'

Slipknot’s New Song, ‘The Chapeltown Rag,’ Was Inspired by the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’

2021-11-10

Corey Taylor of Stone Sour and Slipknot performing live amid a red-lit stage.

Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour – Story by Charles Ken, photo by Anne Erickson

Corey Taylor and Slipknot are back with a new song, “The Chapeltown Rag,” based on the real-life story of a U.K. serial killer, the Yorkshire Ripper

Slipknot have been teasing a new album for months, and now, the band has served up a new single ahead of the record’s release. The new song, called “The Chapeltown Rag,” is available to stream below.

Slipknot last released a full-length album in 2019, “We Are Not Your Kind,” but due to the pandemic, they found themselves with extra time on their hands. They used the downtime to hit the studio again and work on new music. There’s no word on whether “The Chapeltown Rag” will appear on the upcoming Slipknot album, since the band has released one-off singles before, but it was part of those pandemic sessions. Slipknot performed “The Chapeltown Rag” live for the first time last Friday night (Nov. 5) set at Knotfest Los Angeles.

Frontman Corey Taylor calls the new track a “punisher,” speaking with Knotfest.com. He added that it was inspired by the real-life tale of the U.K. town of Chapeltown, which serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, aka the “Yorkshire Ripper,” frequented in the 1970s. Taylor stumbled upon the story by watching a documentary on the Yorkshire Ripper on Netflix.

“At that moment, everything was just kind of steering towards violence, or a history of violence,” Taylor said. “And it was just such a weird echo of social media. And the fact that social media tries to steer you towards violence or steer you towards the most toxic thing – the most toxic moment. So I looked at it from that standpoint.”

He added of the track that it’s “classic Slipknot” and “frenetic.” “But lyrically, it’s coming from a point of talking about the various manipulations that can happen when social media meets media itself,” he continued. “And the different ways that these manipulations can try to pull us in different directions, in the fact that we’re all becoming addicts to it, which is very, very dangerous.”

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Charles Ken

Meet the expert - Charles Ken is a graduate of Michigan State University where he studied writing and history. He's a longtime music buff and covers classic rock for Audio Ink Radio. Contact him at ken@audioinkradio.com.