(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
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).
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