Spiders by Slipknot

Album: We Are Not Your Kind (2019)

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This darkly atmospheric funk-metal song is the most un-Slipknot track on We Are Not Your Kind. The fact that it is bereft of bottom-heavy guitars didn't bother axemen Jim Root and Mick Thomson as some might suspect. "It shows a little bit more of what this band is capable of, in the sense that we've always done moody songs, or heavy soundscapes," Root told Kerrang.

He added that the track "Do Nothing/Bitchslap," from the band's 1996 demo Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat, is also close to being funk. "There's a fine line of this evolution - you don't want to lose sight of what you are," Root said, "but 'Spiders' shows that you don't always have to paint with the same color."
Slipknot took a different approach to tracking this song in the studio. Having recorded the song's core, they continued to add elements to it while they completed the other tracks on the album. "We were looking for the moments to add to it," singer Corey Taylor explained to Loudwire: "It was almost like seasoning a stew. Too much and it doesn't work, just the right amount and its damn near perfect."
The song's meaning is not totally clear, especially the spider metaphors in the chorus. The second verse seems to contain some personal reflection in which Taylor is urging himself to seize the moment.

Your real world isn't ready to face the face behind the real me
Time to think it over, I'm over trying to overthink

The singer seems to be trying to convince himself to be less analytical and more proactive.
The song is in a rare 7/4 tempo. Other famous uses of the 7/4 time signature in rock music include:

The saxophone break in Pink Floyd's "Money".

Soundgarden's "Spoonman. The grunge band frequently used odd time signatures in their songs.

Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill. Mainly 7/4 tempo, the song settles into 4/4 only for the last two measures of each chorus.

The intro to Radiohead's "2+2=5."

Comments: 3

Addie from 11205Great song to listen to
Krol from TexasI think the song might be about archons....if you know what those are. In the 4th dimension, they sometimes look like spiders and they feed off of our addictions and some of the darker impulses. In fact, they encourage them..
.well... cause that's how they eat. Especially, the lyric, "Who is food and who is thrown away." I immediately thought of archons. They are pretty much responsible for the sh-t show in the world right now...but their time is almostmoo up.
Jack from Bristol, UkThe song lyrics are commenting on self-doubt and judgement. People are only a small portion of their true selves, constantly eating away at their internal image like "Spiders" in order to create the version of themselves that they feel are most true to their being on the outside. This is a constant process that is difficult and requires a lot of uncomfortable self-reflection - one must resist the desire to overthink things in this state of mind lest they lose the parts of themselves that they truly wish to incorporate into their sense of self, at least for a while. I believe it has a very fundamental attachment to ones search for themselves and a belief that people are limited by their own internal struggles. The greatest battle in life is between the conscious and the unconscious self.

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