Let me make one thing very, VERY clear: I am not a nu-metal fan. When I was getting into metal, there was maybe FOUR songs I knew from growing up that could be placed in the metal genre, none of which were by Slipknot. I also did not bother to look into nu-metal because, well, I didn't pay a lot of attention to popular music as a kid and, as such, managed to miss the rise and fall of the genre in the popular eye. When I did try to check out nu-metal, though, my overall thoughts were "boring" and "overly depressing", so I didn't bother to check it out further. Throughout my time being a metal fan, this has not changed and, though my initial distaste of metalcore has been worn down enough for me to accept it, me and nu-metal have remained at great odds with each other, but peacefully so: I have let nu-metal be and, in exchange, I've only let nu-metal cross my path when it comes to stuff I actually like from it.
And then Slipknot announced their return with a new album and put out a new single.
...Well, I never bothered with Slipknot in the first place, so who knows, maybe this might be the thing which makes me like nu-metal?
...Yeah, I suspect Israel and Hamas will have peace before I become a nu-metal fan.
...Huh, topical reference. That isn't going to date this article in the slightest, is it?
...Actually, considering who I'm talking about, I have a horrible feeling this article will not be dated for a LONG time. God, that's depressing...
Anyway, let's start with...actually, do I even NEED to give Slipknot's history? They're one of the most well known nu-metal bands, for goodness sake!
...I do? Ugh, fine.
The roots of Slipknot were formed in the town of Des Moines in Iowa in September 1995, when then-drummer Shawn Crahan and bassist Paul Gray formed a band together called The Pale Ones, along with vocalist Anders Colsefni and guitarist Donnie Steele. Joey Jordison joined the band as their drummer (Shawn Crahan moved to percussion) very soon after their foundation and the band mostly jammed together under that name until late 1995, where they changed their name to Slipknot. They started to record their first demo in December of the same year, but lost Donnie Steele in February 1996. He was originally replaced on guitar by Craig Jones, but the band realised that they couldn't replicate the samples they had added to their sound, so he moved to being the band's sampler and Mick Thomson became the band's guitarist. The band's first demo, Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat., was finally released on Halloween 1996 and...um, went nowhere in terms of record label interest, so the band decided to add melodic vocals to their sound by add Stone Sour (heard of them?) vocalist Corey Taylor to the band. This pushed Colsefni to backing vocals and percussion (which leaves me wondering just how much percussion and samples Slipknot need...), who eventually decided to leave the band in September 1997. He was replaced by Greg Welts (only on percussion). The band's second album was released in early 1998 and was far more popular among record labels. Ross Robinson (who is a very well known producer in the nu-metal scene) offered to produce the band's debut album in February 1998, the band added DJ Sid Wilson to the band soon after that, the band received a $500,000 seven album contract from Roadrunner Records (a label who you should know for being big on metalcore and nu-metal in the 90's and a fair bit of the 2000's) in late 1998, the band fired Greg Welts for undisclosed reasons on the 6th of July and publicly signed their deal with Roadrunner on the 8th of July.
The band brought in Chris Fehn to fill in the percussion gap left by Welts and went to California in September to record their debut album. Part of the way through the recording process, the band went back to Iowa for the Christmas period, during which guitarist Josh Brainard decided to quit the band and he was replaced by Jim Root. The band's self-titled debut was released in late June 1999 and was rather popular, which meant that expectations for their follow up was rather large. This follow up, Iowa, came out in late August 2001 (distressingly, about a fortnight before 9/11 occurred) and is regarded by many as a masterpiece of nu-metal (let's ignore the obvious snarky remark of "There's a nu-metal album that's even good?" for a second). However, tensions within the band caused the band to go on hiatus in mid-2002. The members of the band were not quiet, however: Corey Taylor and Jim Root revived Stone Sour (releasing their self-titled debut album in late August 2002), Jordison formed The Murderdolls (which released their debut album, Beyond The Valley Of The Murderdolls, a week before Stone Sour released their debut album, interestingly enough, Crahan formed To My Surprise (which released their debut album in October 2003) and Sid Wilson went solo under the name DJ Starscream.
It was in mid-2003 that the band reunited and began work on their third album, along with producer Rick Rubin (who is on my blacklist, so I will not say anything more about him for the rest of this article). The result was Volume 3: (The Subliminal Verses), which managed to peak at position 2 on the Billboard 200. That band proceeded to tour for the album, took part in the Roadrunner United project (the album of which, The All-Star Sessions, was released in October 2005 and included members of the band on eight of the tracks on the album: specifically, "The Enemy", "Annihilation By The Hands Of God" (which had Joey Jordison co-writing the music for the song), "Tired 'N Lonely" (which had Joey Jordison writing the music for the song), "The Rich Man" (which had Corey Taylor writing the lyrics for the song), "No Way Out" (which had Joey Jordison co-writing the music for the song), "Baptised In The Redemption", "Constitution Down" (which had Joey Jordison writing the music for the song) and "Enemy Of The State" (which had Joey Jordison co-writing the music for the song)) and...went on hiatus again in the end of 2005 after they had finished touring for it.
Huh...world's shortest reunion ever.
Anyway, the members were, again, not quiet: Stone Sour reunited AGAIN and released their second album, Come What(ever) May, in late July 2006, Jordison toured with several bands and produced 3 Inches Of Blood third album, Fire Up The Blades, Crahan formed Dirty Little Rabbits (which released their debut EP, Breeding, in August 2007) and Wilson became DJ Starscream again.
Slipknot began work on their fourth album in February 2008, finishing work on it in June 2008. The result was All Hope Is Gone, which debuted at the top of the Billboard 100. They then proceeded to tour for the album and...went on hiatus AGAIN on Halloween 2009.
...Seriously, do these guys have a hiatus addiction or something? I've seen bands with FAR more inconsistent line ups go through less hiatuses (or is it "hiati"? I don't know what the proper word for having more than one hiatus is...) than Slipknot have!
Anyway, the band's third hiatus was, again, not spent with the members being quiet: Corey Taylor founded Junk Beer Kidnap Band (which sounds like a lost R.E.M. lyric...) and returned with Jim Root to Stone Sour (which released their third album, Audio Secrecy, in September 2010), Crahan continued work with Dirty Little Rabbits (which had released their second EP, Simon, in January 2009: they released their self-titled first album in July 2010), Jordison returned to The Murderdolls (which released their second album, Women And Children Last, in late August 2010), Fehn joined Will Haven and Sid Wilson formed the band Sid.
Tragically, it was during this hiatus that the band's bassist, Paul Gray, died on the 24th of May 2010. The band remained off of the live stage for the rest of the year, deciding whether they should continue with Gray, before finally deciding that they could carry on...and, in a move that I think is actually kind of sweet, in a way, brought back Donnie Steele (...their founding guitarist? Honestly, do you people even read these things? I've spent over an hour writing and researching this so far, and I still think I've been skimming some of it!) to fill in for Gray on the band's live gigs. It was during 2011 that Will Haven's first album with Fehn on bass, Voir Dire, was released. Slipknot released their first greatest hits album, Antennas To Hell, in July 2010. It was also in 2012 that Stone Sour released House Of Gold & Bones - Part 1 in October 2012. The second part of Stone Sour's album came out in April 2013, which is also the last Stone Sour album to feature Jim Root, who was fired in May 2014 after originally sitting out from the band's tour to help finish writing the Slipknot's fifth album. 2013 was also somewhat controversial among Slipknot fans, as Joey Jordison was fired from the band on the 12th of December...yet, apparently, Jordison was also surprised by the news of his departure from the band, which leads me to suspect that someone in Slipknot has grown an ego or didn't want to speak with Jordison any more.
Oh yeah, and Joey Jordison also formed Scar The Martyr in 2013, which released their self-titled debut in October 2013.
So, as we stand, Slipknot are currently without a drummer (although they have two percussionists, one of whom is a drummer, so I imagine he'll be the band's drummer for this track), have no actual replacement for Paul Gray (but have a live replacement for him), the members have as many side projects between all of them that Mike Portnoy has on his own and they have released a new song.
...You got all of that? Good, because I'm NOT going to refer to this again. I already feel like I've learnt more about Slipknot than I even wanted to know...
So, next up is the track for you guys to listen to...EXCEPT it's not actually got officially released to YouTube by the band yet. FUCK!
Ah well, you can stream the song from their website, so it's not all bad. If you want the link, then click here.
So, before I start talking about this, let me remind you that I am not a fan of nu-metal, nor have I ever listened to Slipknot before now, so my opinion on this is likely to mean nothing to people who are nu-metal fans or Slipknot fans. However, I will do my best to judge this track as fairly as I can, considering my bias against their style of music and my ignorance of the band's typical sound.
So, with that out of the way, let's move on to talk about the song!
First of all, let me admit this: yes, this SOUND like nu-metal. No question about it. However, something I have to point out that I've only just noticed now is how much Corey Taylor sounds like Robb Flynn with his vocals. I actually have no problem with this here, but it does give me another reason to not like Machine Head's The Burning Red and Supercharger, so add that onto the long list of reasons why I am trying not to admit to having heard those albums by the band.
...Wait, did I just say that out loud?
Anyway, the best way to sum this song up (without resorting to the very dismissive and not especially helpful comment of "it sounds like nu-metal") is that it sounds somewhat like a combination of groove metal (with a few hints of thrash metal) drumming, heavily downtuned (as in, "groove metal" levels of downtune) and fairly simplistic guitar riffs, sound effects that give the whole thing a somewhat unsettling air to it (...oh yeah, and turntables. For some reason...) and vocals that are best described as "yelled". It's actually a rather interesting listening experience, coming into this without any real knowledge of nu-metal: I can see how this style of music developed and I can get the appeal behind it. I suppose my big issue is that, without any real knowledge of nu-metal, I can't really fairly say exactly how this sounds compared to most nu-metal because I have no real frame of reference for it. However, comparing this to groove metal, I would say that I still find myself saying that I prefer groove metal over nu-metal, albeit in a "lesser of the two evils" kind of way: the downtuned nature of the guitars seem like they're trying to find the lack of complexity in the riffing while the samples and turntables just add nothing to the style of music for me. That said, what IS here is actually not that bad: the vocals, while not really my cup of tea, are actually rather good if you don't mind what sounds like a person basically yelling angrily, the drumming and percussion is very solid and, if you don't mind the use of turntables and samples, I imagine they would give this a sound which is actually rather interesting to listen to. The guitars are also not badly played, although their simplicity does wind me up a tad. The bass...I can't hear it, so I can't really comment on it.
I know this review is rather short, considering how much history you just had to trek through to get here, but, really, all I can say is that it's not bad. If you don't like nu-metal, this will not do anything to change your opinion, but, if you've not heard nu-metal and have a fondness for alternative rock, less melodic styles of metal and hip hop, I imagine you'll quite like this. As for me...well, I don't HATE it, but I wouldn't say this is my kind of thing either. If this is what Slipknot typically sounds like, you can count me out of liking them in the future, but it's still a decent enough listen, in my book. I wouldn't go search out more stuff like this in the future, but, if someone were to play this near me, my first reaction wouldn't be "TURN THAT FUCKING SHIT OFF!" I can understand why a lot of the die hard metal fans aren't fond of this kind of music and I will admit that I would probably be sick of this kind of music very quickly if I heard it a lot on the radio, but, for the occasional listen which I have willingly subjected myself to, I don't think it's that bad.
So yeah...still not a nu-metal fan, but there's no angrily roasting this song over an open fire because I think it sucks. There's some performances on here that are at least decent and most of what I dislike about it is something I can fairly put down to me having different tastes compared to what the style of music is aiming for. I just don't think it's something I would get hyped up about, personally. If you're a nu-metal fan, I do encourage you to at least check this out, since Slipknot are one of the flagship bands of the nu-metal genre. If you aren't familiar with nu-metal, then I'd suggest you ask a nu-metal fan for a good starting point rather than just going for this, but I don't think this is too bad a representation of the genre. If you don't like nu-metal...yeah, I'm certain this isn't going to change your opinion on it in the slightest, so don't bother with it!
This is a really tough one for me to provide a final score on. On the one hand, I don't really like this song that much and feel that, for my taste in music, it's a bit below what I would hold to be an average song. On the other hand, however, I recognise that, if you don't have the same issues that I do with the this style of music, you will no doubt find that this is actually an above average single. So, for the sake of fairness, I will divide my score up between what I feel I should score the song as, factoring in my dislike of nu-metal, and what I recognise the song to be when I factor out my dislike of nu-metal.
Personal score: 4 Out Of 10
My personal hang ups about nu-metal mean that a lot of what this song does simply does nothing for me because it reminds me too much of what I dislike about what I've heard of this style of music and the fact that the performances don't reach a level where I feel they get beyond merely making the song well played means that, from a personal viewpoint, this is not a song I would want to recommend to anyone who isn't already a die hard nu-metal fan. I don't hate this track by any measure, but it does everything that puts me off this style of music and doesn't do enough to win me back over enough to care about it.
Critical Score: 6 Out Of 10 (only missing out on a 7 Out Of 10 because of the lack of audible bass guitar)
When looked at while ignoring my dislike of nu-metal, the stuff that I don't like about the genre is still fairly well done as part of this song and the performances are strong enough for me to at appreciate that actual effort was put into this. If I look at this critically and push my dislike for the genre aside, I would say this is a fairly solid song that is at least worth checking out if you've got any fondness for nu-metal. People who do not like nu-metal in the slightest should, of course, stay far away from this, but there's enough here that's at least enjoyable that I imagine there are a lot of happy Slipknot fans out there, which I guess is the important thing at the end of the day! If you have avoided nu-metal purely because of the bad reputation it has, you might find this worth a listen and you'll probably find it somewhat enjoyable, but I doubt you'll come away loving this enough to want to become a Slipknot fan and I doubt this will ever be your favourite Slipknot track if you do become a Slipknot fan.
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