Solway Firth by Slipknot: The first reaction

A still from Slipknot's Solway Firth video (Image credit: Roadrunner Records)

Slipknot's first album in five years will be unleashed in less than three weeks, and unlike Tool, who are giving us nothing more than a logo that looks like the word 'Poops', the Iowan freaks are whetting our appetite with another new song in the form of new single Solway Firth. And boy, it is one helluva ride.

After the frenetic All Out Life and typical Knot anthem Unsainted, Solway Forth presents an altogether different assault. After quiet glitches and Corey Taylor's sober crooning in a folky cadence, the track kicks off with that unmistakable percussive clatter and pounding riffs.

But it's the brooding underbelly of the song that builds as the band race along, with those urgent melodic guitar lines that cue Taylor's harsh yet catchy vocals, that really lure us in. Mournful piano is juxtaposed by stabbing electronics and even though they pause for breath the whole thing sounds like it's going to come off the tracks. It's dramatic, a little troubling and downright heavy – what more could you want from Slipknot?

Solway Firth is actually that triangular bit of coast on the English-Scottish border. So whether the lyrics are about the history of the two counties or (most likely) something altogether more personal and ambiguous – with Corey ending the song with the chilling 'I haven't smiled in years' – only repeated listens and detailed examination of the album liner notes will ever tell for sure. After all, Taylor's other band Stone Sour have a song called Cardiff, which seems to have nothing to do with the Welsh capital.

It'll be the last track on We Are Not Your Kind and is hopefully an indicator that Solway Firth will be an epic, emphatic exclamation point on a thrilling comeback.

We Are Not Your Kind will be released on August 9. In the meantime, here's the ultimate timeline of the new album.

Rugby, Sean Bean and power ballad superfan Adam has been writing for Hammer since 2007, and has a bad habit of constructing sentences longer than most Dream Theater songs. Can usually be found cowering at the back of gigs in Bristol and Cardiff. Bruce Dickinson once called him a 'sad bastard'.