Jim Root Says Slipknot’s ‘Arsenal’ Won’t Appear On Their Next Album

Slipknot guitarist Jim Root has clarified that surprise single Arsenal will not appear on the band’s forthcoming album, describing it instead as a track they could finish quickly while work continues on the record.

The clarification follows the release of Arsenal this week, which opened Slipknot’s new era on several fronts: it is their first song with drummer Eloy Casagrande, their first since Sid Wilson’s departure and the debut release through the band’s new (sic)est Records imprint.

According to screenshots of Instagram exchanges subsequently shared on Reddit and reported by Loudwire, Root responded directly when asked whether Arsenal would be part of the next Slipknot album.

“No. This was just one that we could finish ‘sooner’ to get out there,” Root wrote.

He also addressed some of the negative reaction surrounding the track, while making clear that fans shouldn’t treat it as a preview of the record as a whole.

“It depends on the commenter, really. I mean, what’s their band doing? And ‘Arsenal’ was a tune we could quickly get out there while we work on the rest of the record. It’s not really representative of the other tunes,” Root wrote.

The comments add useful context to a release that initially looked like the first direct taste of Slipknot’s next album.

Instead, Arsenal now sits closer to standalone releases such as 2018’s All Out Life, which arrived ahead of We Are Not Your Kind but did not appear on the standard album tracklist.

Work on Slipknot’s actual follow-up to The End, So Far is continuing.

As we reported earlier this week, Root has shared evidence that tracking is underway with producer Matt Wallace, while the band had already accumulated around 50 arrangements by July.

Root previously described the material as sounding “like nothing I’ve ever heard before, yet there’s a familiarity to it that feels like I’ve been listening to it my whole life”.

For now, that material remains largely unheard.

Arsenal may have launched (sic)est Records and introduced this version of Slipknot on record, but Root’s latest comments make one thing clear: it is not the blueprint for what comes next.