All Hope Is Gone

mbrmetalhead

It seems to me that Slipknot were always kind of a joke in the metal community; when I was a teenager and they released their first records, they were the group young ones were listening to to show they were angry and had a rebelious mind, and in many cases they were moving rapidely from this phase. To put it nicely, they were a gate to a whole universe of music, no more, no less. With time they developed more and more their 'pop' side, and it particularly shows here, behind the blast beats. They kind of are a caricature of a heavy band who wants to fill stadium and please the crowd. Their music here is actually pretty easy to listen to: lots of melodies and melodic singing, lots of groove, and just the right amount of growl and blast beats to show they're still in the game. If it was me and a Slipknot album had to appear in this list, I would have chosen one of their two first albums, with which they came to prominence for the influence they might have on a generation of young metalheads. This album is too far from their rawer roots and too crowd-pleasing to be of real interest.

badgers-1001-albums

1001albums-satsuma

This was my first time listening to Slipknot - the whole masks, costumes and “look at me - I’m EDGY!” shtick is a bit off putting if you’re not in the target demographic. However, first impressions of this were promising - I enjoyed the distorted feedback and metal guitar work, but I still find screamed vocals hard to follow. The lyrical content is as expected with song titles like Snuff and Sulfur. They’re good at what they do but it’s not for me - sorry!