Slipknot

Slipknot hail from Iowa and play what is fundamentally death-metal, but they do so with two novel ideas: they are a large ensemble, not the stereotypical quartet, and they wear horror costumes. Thus Slipknot (Roadrunner, 1999) leverages turntables, samples and percussions, not just guitars, to achieve maximum ferocity, in a manner that makes Slayer and Sepultura pale.
The music is excessive and furious, with frequent changes of pace, and a wealth of sonic detours. The grotesque panzer dance of Sic lets the vocalist scream his vulgar outrage over tribal drums and mad guitars. A similar farcical posture, conjuring images of a witches cancan, underlies Surfacing, while the turntables hark back to the industrial devastation of Cop Shoot Cop. The limping pace and the agonizing guitar riffs of Eyel E SS sound like a vaudeville sketch in hell. The epic rap of Spit It Out indulges in wild dynamics, for example repeating the refrain in two completely opposite tones, that demonstrate the difference with, say, Kid Rock. This style that straddles the line between tragic and comic reveals its desperate face in Liberate, not a song but an act of vomiting, and No Life, not a song but a schizophrenic duet between an evil and a wise selves.
In the middle of this uncontrolled havoc, the bands suddenly turns into Nirvana copycats with the relatively catchy refrain of Wait And Bleed, while Tattered And Torn is an avantgarde piece masquerading as a personal exorcism. And the album closes with the total chaos of Scissors (nine minute), a Freudian descent into a damned soul. There is enough variety to engage the listener in a re-examination of her metal stereotypes.

Iowa (Roadrunner, 2001) continued the onslaught of the first album with the frantic and bombastic People=Shit and the death-rockabilly fit of Disasterpiece, while My Plague and Left Behind and especially Gently (which is an instrumental piece, save the temper the fury with quite prominent melodic elements. animal-like groans of the vocalist) Their ferocious poetry culminates with the lengthy slow-motion psychodrama Iowa. Unfortunately, too many songs are just not musical enough, with the vocalist simply uttering his angry lyrics over a stereotyped post-death instrumental backdrop. In one or two cases that works to the advantage of the sense of drama (The Shape), but in most cases (even the lengthy Skin Ticket) it simply detracts from the show.

Corey Taylor of Slipknot launched a side project called Stone Sour that released the solid Stone Sour (2002) and and Come Whatever May (2006).

Slipknot simplified their sound a lot for The Subliminal Verses (Roadrunner, 2004), indulging in the placid Circle and Vermilion Pt 2, and searching for pop hooks (Duality), while almost downplaying the fiery Before I Forget and Pulse Of The Maggots.

The "experimental" All Hope Is Gone (2008) sounded terribly old-fashioned and trivial in the scene of 2008.

Slipknot's bassist Paul Gray was found dead in 2010 at the age of 38. Slipknot's drummer Joey Jordison died in 2021.

In 2023 both keyboard Craig Jones and drummer Jay Weinberg left the band, the latter soon replaced by Eloy Casagrande (a former Sepultura).