Slipknot have put out five minutes of behind the scenes footage from the shoot for Arsenal, directed like the video itself by Shawn Crahan, and in it he answers the question the video raised: where was the band.
“This one was difficult because we definitely wanted to do the band,” Crahan says. “It feels so right to do the band. It's too early to make masks and outfits and be sure of that stuff. And I definitely don't want to regurgitate old stuff, because Slipknot doesn't do that. It's my job to make sure we don't repeat ourselves.”
The reason underneath it is scheduling rather than concept. The eighth album is still being made and the campaign around it has not started, so the masks and the clothes that go with it do not exist yet, and Crahan would rather show nothing than show last time's. He describes the result as deliberately bewildering and says he is done fighting either the song or the video: “Two for one. Get it when you can.”
Arsenal does not belong to that album. Jim Root has already said it is a standalone single, recorded while the band works with Matt Wallace on the record proper. It is also the first thing they have released on (sic)est Records, the imprint they set up after the Roadrunner deal ended, and the first since Sid Wilson and Craig Jones left.