Often, musical performers try to convey in their songs all the emotions and feelings that they had at the time of writing the song itself. Most often in songs they write about unrequited love, about unfulfilled dreams – all this is not about Slipknot. In their songs, the group writes about suffering, loneliness and depression, expressing their emotions not under melancholic and lyrical melodies, but under the heavy sound of an electric guitar and loud drum parts, which their fans liked.
However, the song “The Dying Song (Time to Sing)” from the seventh studio album “The End, So Far” is an exception, because it completely contradicts the canonical style of the group, which did not particularly please the audience of Slipknot.
Slipknot’s latest album was “We Are Not Your Kind”, which was released in August 2019. Also last year, the band lost beloved drummer and Slipknot co-founder Joey Jordison. Joey has been the band’s key drummer for eighteen years since its inception (1995). The group dedicated a video with amateur footage to the ex-drummer. Slipknot took his departure hard, as did the band’s fans themselves. After all this, on September 30, the release of the album “The End, So Far” was scheduled, the first song of which was “The Dying Son”, released along with a video directed by Sean Craine himself, aka “The Clown”.
In a February interview, Corey Taylor, the band’s frontman and vocalist, said of the upcoming material: “It’s just a plague, dudes. It’s darker than We Are Not Your Kind, but also wildly melodic. In general, I tell everyone that we recorded a heavier version of Vol.3 (The Subliminal Verses). Huge amount of textures and layers, heavy stuff clashes with melodic stuff; many hooks; lots of cool tunes. I’m just looking forward to getting this album out in public.” Corey really did not lie, because the album came out melodic and a little pop.
Most of the band’s fans, unfortunately, were not used to hearing such Slipknot and were not particularly enthusiastic about the released album – which is not surprising when compared with their previous works. The lack of enthusiasm and some misunderstanding was caused by the song “The Dying Song”, the meaning of which was not clear to all the fans of the group. The musicians themselves spoke about the single with the words: “New music, new art and new beginnings. Get ready for the end.”
“The Dying Song”, aka “Time to Sing”, tells us about a man who has reached the pinnacle of despair. He has to cope with many life difficulties, depression and a sense of defeat. The song is permeated with loneliness – it is this feeling that covers the hero at the moment of his spiritual “defeat”. In addition to the especially emphasized feeling of loneliness in the chorus, it also mentions the absence of loved ones at a difficult moment in life, because of which the hero becomes depressed. All the anger and hatred is conveyed through the song by using a rude and, in some places, deviant address to the listener.
The song fully conveys the feeling of despair and agony, and the atmosphere surrounding the protagonist literally pushes him to give up, however, despite all the negativity and darkness around him, he urges the listener not to give up in the face of insurmountable difficulties, which is the main idea of the song – the need pull yourself together and go to the end. For a more detailed explanation of the meaning of the song, it is worth referring to the translation of its lines.
The introduction begins with the lines: “Put your hands into the water, let your mouth go sick and dry”, that is: “Put your hands into the water, let your mouth dry up to the pain” – the hero urges the listener to relax and calm down, as if it wasn’t painful or hard. “Put your life into your death now, let them sing until you die” – “Put your life into your death, right now, let them sing until you die” – with this line the author asks us to go to the end and try to so that our works will be appreciated after death.
Failure will “sing until we die” – the difficult moments of our lives will get in our way, creating certain obstacles, but we still need to go all the way to achieve at least something. The phrase “Die, die, die” at the end of the introduction is just the same “singing” of our failures – life is trying to break us in all ways, constantly pushing us to defeat. Further, in the first verse of the song, the performer asks the listener to show how he resists the system, calling the listener a “comatose communist.” Forget, deny, ignore – nice try, it’s you trying to be yourself.
After a few more lines, the refrain follows, beginning with the words: “The heart begins to suffer, when the soul has given up” – “The heart begins to suffer when the soul stops resisting” – this means that when a person gives up and when his state of mind does not endures, his heart begins to suffer from heaviness and negativity around. It was then that “The time will come to sing this dying song alone” – “Time to sing this dying song alone” – only when a person is overtaken by complete loneliness and when he realizes that his strength is ending, he will begin to sing and scream about his pain and hatred for everything around.
A person understands that he was left alone and that no one close to him was left around him, because of which I comprehend complete despair, which comes out along with anger and all the pain. “Regret, rely, remorse inside of you” – “Regret, hope, remorse – everything is inside you” – the author notes that during the “death song”, people experience a violent sweat of emotions, where, in addition to anger and pain, hope, regret and repentance. At such moments, a person is fully revealed and his soul is turned inside out. But despite all the suffering, resentment against the world and everyone around you, you need to remain yourself and go to the end.
