Danish psychedelic doom/stoner metal unit Sonic Moon has signed deal with Ripple Music and concurrently announced the release of their sophomore full-length. Entitled In Lack Of Clarity, it will land in stores on November 6th, 2026. Mix and mastering handled by Haldor Grunberg at Satanic Audio. To taste a first piece of the new material, check out the opening track called “Weightlessness”. Read more…
Dutch composer Jozef Van Wissem and legendary American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch have announced two new collaborative albums, Bocca di Lupo and Mouth Of The Wolf, arriving together this fall. The lead single “Never Like You Said” is out today, and it features Courtney Barnett, who released her new record Creature Of Habit earlier this year.
Sophie Perras is a multidisciplinary artist who’s based in Montreal and who makes dreamy, folky indie pop under the name Fine Food Market. Last year, she impressed us with her debut EP I’m afraid to be in love with someone who crashes their car that much. This fall, she’ll follow that record with Alas Time Has Passed, her first full-length.
There are many ways you can get people’s attention at the start of a record. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Pantera’s The Great Southern Trendkill and was blown away by how an album could open with that level of ferocity. The drums that fill your ears like gunfire at the opening of Mastodon’s Blood Mountain also spring to mind when it comes to memorable album openings but the daddy of them all, to these ears at least, comes in the form of naming more drugs than the anti-heroes of Trainspotting could consume in a weekend. Feel Good Hit Of The Summer’s thudding, trance inducing call to arms is as captivating an album opener as you will find and is the prefect starting point for this trippy, all encompassing journey from Queens of the Stone Age.
On an album that goes from pure rock fury to laid back, baby-making vibes, the one true constant throughout the album is groove. Sweet, sweet groove that grabs you like a velvet chokehold on each and every one of these tracks (even when those fucking trumpets come in at the end of the album) and never relinquishes her grip.
Whether that groove is found on the pumping, hip-shaking feel of Monsters In The Parasol, the campfire beauty of acoustic instrumental Lightning Song or the psychedelic stop-start vibes of Leg Of Lamb, each song is driven by beats that enthrall and hook you to the point that they could go on forever and you’d be too lost in it’s constraint to give a single, solitary fuck.
Something that Queens aren’t given enough credit for is the catchiness of their songwriting and Rated R is rammed full of all-time classic songs that have vocal lines the size of mountains. The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret brims with flamboyant guitar licks and that irrepressible liquid bass but when the guitars go off like a landmine, that chorus is the stuff of legend. The desert punk of Quick And To The Pointless might have a Nick Oliveri vocal that could best be described as unhinged but, by god, that “Baby, baby you’re so sweet” refrain is a motherfucker to dislodge from your head. I’d also mention Homme’s smooth as butter delivery on Better Living Through The Chemistry but, frankly, we don’t want to make ovaries all over the world explode.
In truth, you could pick any of QOTSA’s first three albums and describe them as a classic record. Dave Grohl’s powerhouse tub-thumping on Songs For The Deaf adds the stuff of legends on top of stellar songwriting and that debut album is all rock and roll abandon and ‘couldn’t give less of a fuck’ attitude but Rated R gets our vote just for its ability to take you out of the world and make you truly lose yourself in the music. There’s magic in that. We can romanticise it all we like but there’s nothing like experiencing it.
Stoned Jesus have dropped an official music video for “Jackal”, the latest new single from their upcoming Songs To Moon album which comes out on October 16th. Read more…
Slipknot have released “Arsenal” with no announcement, no rollout and no warning. It premiered in the Hottest Record slot on BBC Radio 1’s New Music Show With Jack Saunders, arrives with a video directed by Shawn “Clown” Crahan starring Jackson White, and it’s their first new music in over three years. It’s also the first Slipknot song without Sid Wilson or Craig Jones, the first with Eloy Casagrande on drums — and the first Slipknot release in twenty-five years that doesn’t come out on Roadrunner.
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Scott Penfold covers the surprise Slipknot single on today’s Metal Breakdown Daily — the song, the Clown-directed video, and the business move behind it that answers a question we were asking twenty-four hours ago. Download the free Loaded Radio App on Apple iOS and Google Play and get it every weekday morning.
What Corey said about it
Speaking to Jack Saunders on Radio 1, Taylor didn’t hedge.
His description: it pummels. It’s absolutely a pummelling experience. One of his favourite things about it is that it encapsulates everything they do — great moments of hyperactivity, and then at the end, a sublime drop that just makes it. His words: it’s like they’ve got everyone by the hair and they’re just going, go, go. That, to him, sums up Slipknot completely.
He’s not wrong about the shape of it. The track moves between compressed brutality and outright chaos, with keyboards knifing through the middle and riffs that arrive with actual weight behind them.
And lyrically he’s doing something interesting — swinging between genuine braggadocio and self-awareness in the same breath. There’s a line about fighting a god and the god losing. There’s another where he calls himself a hack and a has-been before immediately arguing that he’s a .45 rather than a Mach 10 — which is a man addressing his critics and dismissing them inside eight words.
Then he screeches the whole thing to a halt and shouts at his own band, bulldozing the wall of sound they’d spent three minutes building.
Twenty-seven years in, that’s a group still finding the edges.
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The bit nobody’s connecting
Here’s what makes today more significant than a surprise single.
“Arsenal” is the first release on (sic)est Records — Slipknot’s own label. It arrives after the completion of a record deal with Roadrunner that ran for two and a half decades.
Yesterday, when Jim Root confirmed the band were tracking album eight, we reported that nobody knew how it was coming out. That question is now answered, and the answer is that they’re putting it out themselves.
Now put that next to something from last autumn.
Slipknot sold their music catalogue to HarbourView Equity Partners — publishing and recording masters royalties. That deal covered the archival catalogue. It did not extend to future releases.
Sit with the sequence.
They took the money for twenty-five years of back catalogue. They let a twenty-five-year label deal expire rather than renewing it. They set up their own imprint. And they kept every cent of everything they make from this point forward.
That’s not a band washing up on the shore of independence because the industry moved on. That’s a band who read the room, worked out the order of operations, and executed it while everyone was arguing about masks.
For a group whose entire mythology is built on chaos, it’s a remarkably cold-blooded piece of business.
The lineup that made it
This is the other thing worth stating plainly, because it’s the first evidence of what the new band sounds like.
Sid Wilson left in August 2026 after twenty-nine years. Craig Jones left in June 2023. Those two men were the turntablist and the sampler — the two members whose entire job was noise that wasn’t guitars, and the reason the debut album felt like being buried alive in 1999.
Eloy Casagrande joined in early 2024 from Sepultura, replacing Jay Weinberg, and this is the first recorded evidence of him in the band.
So “Arsenal” is the first Slipknot song made without either of the people who built their sonic identity, with the most technically accomplished drummer they’ve ever had.
I said yesterday that I wanted to hear what the band sounds like with that hole in it. Now we’ve got three and a half minutes of an answer, and the honest verdict is that the density is still there — it’s just being generated differently. The keyboards are doing more. The rhythm section is doing considerably more.
Whether that holds across a full album is the question album eight has to answer.
The video was directed by M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan and stars Jackson White.
Crahan directing Slipknot’s visuals is not new — he’s shaped this band’s look since the beginning, and it’s part of why their imagery has never felt like something a label commissioned. This year also finally saw the release of Look Outside Your Window, the experimental record he’d been sitting on since the Vol. 3 sessions.
On a release that’s the first on their own label, having a founding member direct the video is the entire point. Nobody outside the band touched this.
Where they’ve been
Some context on the gap.
The End, So Far arrived in August 2022 — number one on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart, number two on the Billboard 200, and their sixth top ten album there. It debuted at number one in the UK, Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Mexico.
Their last live performance was Inkcarceration in Ohio in July 2025. Over a year ago.
Since 1999 they’ve taken a Grammy from eleven nominations, gone platinum repeatedly, and logged billions of streams. Rolling Stone put Iowa on its list of the hundred greatest metal albums ever made, and The Ringer called them the most important heavy band of their era.
Three years of silence, one surprise single, and a label they own.
No word on whether Sid Wilson or Craig Jones appear anywhere on the material recorded before they left.
What we do know is that there are roughly fifty song ideas, Matt Wallace is producing, tracking is underway, and the first single is out on their own imprint.
TL;DR
Slipknot have surprise-released “Arsenal,” their first new music in over three years, premiered on BBC Radio 1’s Hottest Record slot.
The video was directed by founding member Shawn “Clown” Crahan and stars Jackson White.
It’s the first release on (sic)est Records, Slipknot’s own label, following the end of a Roadrunner deal that lasted two and a half decades.
Last autumn the band sold their catalogue to HarbourView Equity Partners — a deal covering archival publishing and masters royalties that explicitly excluded future releases.
It’s the first Slipknot song without Sid Wilson or Craig Jones, and the first with Eloy Casagrande on drums.
Corey Taylor on the track: it pummels, it encapsulates everything they do, and the drop at the end is what makes it.
Their last album was The End, So Far in August 2022. Their last live show was July 2025.
FAQ
What is Slipknot’s new song?
“Arsenal,” surprise-released on September 9, 2026 and premiered in the Hottest Record slot on BBC Radio 1’s New Music Show With Jack Saunders. It’s the band’s first new music since 2022’s The End, So Far, and arrives with a video directed by founding member Shawn “Clown” Crahan starring Jackson White.
What label is Slipknot on now?
Their own. “Arsenal” is the first release on (sic)est Records, launched after the completion of the band’s two-and-a-half-decade recording contract with Roadrunner Records.
Is “Arsenal” from a new Slipknot album?
No album has been announced. Guitarist Jim Root confirmed in September 2026 that the band are tracking their eighth studio album with producer Matt Wallace, having gone in with around fifty song ideas, but no title, tracklist or release date has been made public.
Is Sid Wilson on “Arsenal”?
No. Wilson left the band in August 2026 after twenty-nine years, and “Arsenal” is Slipknot’s first release without him. It is also their first without sampler Craig Jones, who departed in June 2023, and the first featuring drummer Eloy Casagrande.
Did Slipknot sell their music catalogue?
Yes. In autumn 2025 the band sold their catalogue to HarbourView Equity Partners, in a deal covering publishing and recording masters royalties for their archival material. It reportedly did not extend to future releases, meaning new music including “Arsenal” is unaffected.
Three years of silence, no warning, and a song they own outright. Is “Arsenal” the Slipknot you wanted back? Tell me below. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.
All the way from Darlington, Blood Countess really gained some extra fans on the New Blood stage this year. Sean finds out what makes them tick… Blood Countess: facebook | instagram | spotify | bandcamp
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