SLIPKNOT‘s “Unsainted” single was certified gold by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America) on October 7 for accumulating 500,000 certified units. According to the RIAA, one equivalent song unit is equal to a single digital song sale, or 150 on-demand audio and/or video streams.
“Unsainted” is taken from SLIPKNOT‘s latest album, “We Are Not Your Kind”, which came out in August 2019. The disc sold 118,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Furthermore, the album made an impact worldwide with No. 1 debuts in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Australia, Canada, Japan, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and Finland, as well as Top 5 debuts in Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain and New Zealand.
“We Are Not Your Kind”‘s sales in the U.S. were boosted by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with SLIPKNOT‘s summer 2019 tour.
SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root told Kerrang! about “Unsainted”: “Before we even started writing this record, Clown had been like, ‘I want to get a choir.’ He was thinking in terms of a children’s choir, like a PINK FLOYD ‘The Wall’ kind of thing, but we ended up getting a regular choir, and they took a version of the melody line from the original guitar line that started the demo song, which is a variation of the chorus riff. The choir did what they did, and to me it turned out to be pretty epic. I heard someone compare it to ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ by THE ROLLING STONES, and I think that’s a pretty ambitious comparison, but I’ll certainly take it. [Laughs].”
SLIPKNOT recently canceled all of its previously announced summer 2020 tour dates, including the “Knotfest Roadshow”, Knotfest UK and Knotfest At Sea, due to the coronavirus pandemic which is sweeping the globe.