Yet the fire that had been re-lit in their bellies fuelled crushing metal stompers such as Solway Firth with an intensity that hadn’t been there for years. The Slipknot of 2019 came with a greater grasp of melody than ever, and a wider pool of influences – see the gothic, industrial crawl of the excellent Spiders for evidence. Once the band released the album’s first single Unsainted it was clear that they had something special on their hands. This doesn’t just feel like a return to form, it feels like a brand new chapter and a pointer to what Slipknot can still achieve. But they certainly silenced the doubters with We Are Not Your Kind. You’d be forgiven for believing that, for all their continued success and continually great live shows, Slipknot were never going to scale the heights of their earliest material as their sixth album came over the horizon at the start of 2019. That aside, Vol.3 still out-punches most metal band’s best efforts. If there is a criticism then it would be the fact that, once again, at just over an hour it lags towards the end. For proof, there’s the inhumanly huge Duality, which might just be their definitive festival rousing song, but it’s also on tracks like Prelude 3.0 and Circle, which lean on the right side of melodic without losing any of the band's famous intensity. This is a genuinely great collection of songs, and it’s the place where Slipknot began to really branch out and become better songwriters. So, it’s by no means a failure of Vol.3 that it finds itself at this place in our countdown. It’s not easy having to follow up two landmark albums, but that’s the position Slipknot found themselves in heading in to the recording of their third effort. More than anything, there's the sense that this one is a sleeper. But its very eclecticism means it lacks the laser-focused intent of We Are Not Your Kind, or even Vol.3: The Subliminal Verses, the album to which Corey Taylor himself has compared it. Almost as predictably, the reaction to the tantalisingly-titled The End, So Far when it was released a year later was mixed – it doubled down on the experimental approach of We Are Not Your Kind, to the delight of some fans and the inevitable annoyance of others.īut is it any good? At its best, as on surpisingly left-field, Radiohead-influenced opener Adderall or full-on ragers The Dying Song (Time To Sing), H377 and The Chapeltown Rag, it’s the equal of what they’ve done before, with an added layer of sonic adventurousness. Such is Slipknot’s status these days that the noise surrounding their new album was deafening even before they dropped frenetic first single The Chapeltown Rag in November 2021. The main problem is that, with 14 tracks and a running time of around an hour, it could have done with some editing to turn what is a flabby effort into a truly great record. Understandably, there's far more in the way of sombre material here – not always a bad thing, as in the case of powerfully moving opening track XIX – and when Slipknot do launch into the heavier likes of Custer and the menacing The Devil In I they sound great. 5: The Gray Chapter – dedicated to the late Paul Gray – is an uneven record. So, maybe we shouldn’t be too harsh on the fact that it's certainly not one of their best. Within two years of its release, bassist Paul Gray had passed away, and three years later drummer Joey Jordison was unceremoniously ousted from the band.Ĭoming in the aftermath of the genuine trauma that the band experienced at the start of the 2010’s, it’s an achievement that we got a fifth Slipknot album at all. It’s unfortunate that All Hope Is Gone is the final recorded document showcasing the “classic” Slipknot line-up when it’s such a deeply flawed record. Hearing them in their embryonic form here is interesting, but there is very little in the way of evidence that Slipknot would go on to become a band to define a generation. Some songs, such as Only One and Tattered And Torn, went on to appear on their ‘proper’ self-titled 1999 debut. Is only really worth revisiting as an exercise in researching their early days. It showcasing a band very much in their infancy. The very first Slipknot album – essentially a demo – lacks Corey Taylor, Sid Wilson and Jim Root (the band features original singer Anders Colsefni, guitarists Donnie Steele and Josh Brainard, and no DJ).
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