The first fragment of 'The Chapeltown Rag' surfaced on a cryptic website in November 2021, and within days Slipknot fans were dissecting every distorted second. The domain thechapeltownrag.com offered no context, just jagged audio loops that could have been a new single or an elaborate hoax. On November 4 the band confirmed it, and the following day the full track hit streaming platforms before being unleashed live at Knotfest Los Angeles. That rollout set the tone for The End, So Far, the seventh studio album from the Iowa nine-piece, released September 30, 2022 via Roadrunner Records.
Four years on, The End, So Far reads less like a routine release and more like a triple farewell. It was the final Slipknot album on Roadrunner Records, ending a partnership that began in 1998 and stretched across nearly three decades. It was also the last record to feature Craig Jones, Jay Weinberg, and Sid Wilson. Jones departed in June 2023, Weinberg followed in November the same year, and Wilson walked away in August 2026, leaving the album as an unintentional time capsule of a specific lineup.
The most visible change arrived behind the percussion rig. Michael Pfaff made his studio debut on The End, So Far, having replaced Chris Fehn back in March 2019. Fehn's dismissal had been messy and public, and Pfaff stepped into a role that demanded more than technical precision. Slipknot's percussion section is a physical spectacle, a second pulse running beneath the drums, and Pfaff's integration into the recorded material marked the first time that chemistry was captured in a studio setting rather than on a festival stage.
The closing argument
Shawn Crahan began dropping hints as early as May 2021, telling interviewers that the band was building new music. By June he had sharpened the timeline, suggesting the album could surface before the end of that year. What he said next mattered more: after this record, Slipknot would part ways with Roadrunner. The statement landed like a business footnote at the time, but it framed everything that followed. The End, So Far was always meant to be a closing argument.
That finality seeped into the record's dimensions. At 57 minutes and 31 seconds, The End, So Far became the shortest Slipknot studio album to that point. The band that had once sprawled across sprawling concept pieces and experimental detours was now compressing its fury. There is a difference between trimming excess and running out of things to say, and the tension between those two readings gives the album its strange, unsettled energy.
Production details emerged slowly. In December 2021, Corey Taylor confirmed that mixing was scheduled for January. The gap between that announcement and the September 2022 release suggests a process that was anything but rushed. Slipknot's previous albums had all arrived with a certain chaotic momentum, but The End, So Far felt more deliberate, as if the band was consciously shaping something final rather than simply capturing a moment.
The Roadrunner era ends
Musically, the album operates within the alternative metal and nu metal frameworks Slipknot helped define, but it refuses to settle into nostalgia. The songs are leaner, more direct, occasionally laced with melody that would have seemed out of place a decade earlier. This is still a record built on down-tuned guitars and rhythmic aggression, yet the compression of the runtime forces each track to justify its existence. Nothing overstays.
The Roadrunner relationship deserves the weight of its longevity. Twenty-four years is an eternity in the record industry, and Slipknot spent that entire stretch with the same label. From the self-titled debut's masked chaos through the arena-sized ambitions of later work, Roadrunner was the constant. The End, So Far became the period at the end of that sentence, an ending that was announced years in advance and still felt abrupt when it finally arrived.
The End, So Far became the period at the end of that sentence, an ending that was announced years in advance and still felt abrupt when it finally arrived.
Sid Wilson's departure in August 2026 means the album now stands as the last documented studio evidence of an era that can never be recreated. Craig Jones' samples and electronics, Jay Weinberg's drumming, Wilson's turntable chaos — all three are permanently absent from whatever Slipknot becomes next. The 57 minutes and 31 seconds of The End, So Far turn out to be the only complete studio snapshot of that configuration. Four years later, it sounds less like an ending and more like a warning nobody fully heard at the time.