Metal Education - Part II
DISCLAIMER: I know what I’m getting into and what I’m looking for but it’s probably time that I told you. Some of the material that I will be reviewing is much darker and far more morbid than what most of society is comfortable dealing with. Music is a departure from visual art forms in that if the art piece “Pisschrist” offends you, you can close your eyes but even if the “Pisschrist” is shoved in your face you may never actually get to what the artist was trying to communicate to you. Visual art is far more objective. If these Metal bands want to communicate some sort of negativity to the observer, they are going to spell it out for you and you are most likely going to get it. If you don’t want to be offended don’t follow me here.
I have collected a lot of negative impressions concerning the band Slipknot. The band Slipknot are or were what I would consider mainstream but I’ve avoided them for a number of reasons. I am reviewing this album now only because I respect the opinion of the person who suggested it to me. I’d like to give you some of the reasons why I don’t like Slipknot.
There are nine freaking guys in this band, nine guys. That’s a veritable squad of musicians and that alone gives me the idea that this band produces a wall of sound that will make it impossible for me to pick out a melody or an instrument or anything. It also would lead me to believe that there are too many people involved in this creative process. I believe that having too many people in on a project like this could really blur the intent and turn a good idea into a jumbled mess. Let’s hope half of the crew just runs around on stage like maniacs for aesthetic effect.
Another thing that annoyed me about Slipknot was some of their visual art, particularly a t-shirt that I saw. I saw this t-shirt on some angry kid in a mall some years ago and at first glance I thought it was awesome so I looked a little closer. The premise of the design on the shirt was a red pentacle on a black background with some evil looking gibberish arranged around it. It’s the gibberish that turned me off. It was the word “Leviathan” in Hebrew. The idea that the shirt was trying to present was evil and the idea of “Leviathan” is really anything but. I’ll spare you the occult details and how the symbol on the t-shirt translates but basically the Leviathan is the expanse that separates man from God. It’s the suspension of disbelief that is a prerequisite for the existence free will. The t-shirt might as well have had a happy tree (tree as a symbol of growing from the earth to touch the heavens) on it, a red happy tree on a black background. Oooh spooky! If you’re going to try and market yourself as an evil bastard don’t wear the yellow Wal-Mart happy face, although that too is debatable.
I had also been told by several reliable sources that the band used mathematical formulas to come up with there music. Math is cool and all but the idea that this band had actual formulas to crank out chord patterns and distortion frequencies kind of made me feel like they had no creativity at all other than perhaps the original method of translating the formulas from paper to a musical format. The whole idea kind of bored me once the newness of the concept wore off.
Slipknot didn’t just show up on the scene, they exploded. I had never heard of them and then all of a sudden I was seeing their t-shirts and merchandise everywhere. I’ve always been turned off by events like this. When everyone jumps on the same boat really quickly, I start looking for another boat.
None of my reasons for not liking Slipknot really had any validity and as it turns out some of them were just plain wrong but with so much good music out there that I knew about, these reasons were enough to keep me from purchasing anything by these nine musical luchiadores. Oh yeah, have I mentioned that the entire band wears jumpsuits and masks? Apparently that is to keep the focus on their music and get away from making too much of the actual band members. Tool has a similar attitude with their excessively dark live performances and I can respect that. I do think the mask have become more of a marketing tool whether or not that was the band’s original intent.
I recently did some internet research which can hardly be a credible source of information but here is what I found. There is little mention of the math Metal in relation to the music of Slipknot other than to say that they play with precision in a technical sense, so the frequency formula thing is probably bunk. The 9 band members do in fact all play instruments of sorts. Two band members play electronic instruments, i.e. a DJ and a sampler, and another two of the members play the drums that kids march with in high school bands. They literally walk around stage wearing what I think are snare drums and that is their instrument… I’m not really sure what this does for the band’s sound, maybe if you really really want your friend in the band then this is what you do?
This is the album cover and I think it is pretty badass. The colors are really a little brighter than I’d like but maybe that’s to hint at some kind of departure from the typical sense of evil that the goat head might represent. The goat by the way is another jacked up symbol. The goat or scapegoat is an animal you use to carry the weight of your sin and is usually killed or sent off into the desert to die. You use a scapegoat to cover your ass when you’ve done something wrong. With that in mind how is Jesus not a scapegoat? I’m not trying to slander Jesus I’m just saying that maybe the goat was a poor symbol for the Church of Satan to use as their mascot.
Fig 1: {515}
This is an introductory track that is actually pretty cool if you’re into noise music. There are no easily recognizable instruments and the only sense of rhythm that you get is from a noise generator producing some nice undulating patterns. There are chopped up bits of screams of agony that are cut and arranged in such a way that they never really begin or end they just kind of shuffle and stutter along the track in a disorienting and somewhat amusing fashion. I wish this track were longer and had a few more musical ideas thrown into it. The track is only sixty seconds long, but alas this is a Metal band and this track is probably just an attempt at being creepy that accidentally turned into a nice piece of noise music. The band labels the tracks figures instead of tracks so I have done the same here.
Fig 2: People = Shit
I hope you didn’t turn up your speakers to attempt to listen closely to the first track in an attempt to hear what might be spoken underneath the heavily edited cries because if you did then you just got monkey stomped on the skull by nine guys who are bat-shit crazy. I have to say right from the start that I like the title of this track. The drummer in this band is a freaking machine and if you get to close to the singer while he is singing it seems like your face might get bitten off completely, or at least that’s what I got out of the first 15 seconds of this track which sounds like an evil band warming up. The lyrics actually address a topic that I can identify with. At it’s core, that is underneath the epithets concerning brutality and angst which are meant to be emasculating, there is the concept of a person who tries to be an overachiever and only gives himself credit for failure. I know a lot of people who are like that actually. I myself give too much credence to the things that I screw up. The idea behind the references to violence here is that when you feel like you’ve nothing to lose then nothing has value whether the subjects is you or someone else. The track is catchy and after listening to the album several times this is the one that is easily most identifiable to me. If I am going somewhere to kick someone’s ass and I want a soundtrack, this song is definitely a contender, that is if I don’t have any Hatebreed available and that’s saying a lot in my opinion.
“I’m not afraid to cry, but that’s none of your business!”
The first part of this lyric is almost whimpered and the second part is a jarring and angry yell. This is easily on of the most communicative and memorable lines on the album.
Fig 3: Disasterpiece
The first verse describes a physically brutal act that is easily the most horrible thing that I have ever read. I want to quote it because I can’t get it out of my head. It’s like a train wreck that you just have to look at. It was difficult to address the rest of the song after that verse. This song voices a brutal disdain for dishonesty, a concept that I am all to ready to identify with and the music is dead on. If the first track is the trip to the beating then this track is right on time for the execution of some meat pounding. If you have a neck, and weren’t scared off by the first verse, then you are going to head bang to this track. Towards the end of the song the lead singer comes down from his angry yells to hint at some vocal versatility that I hope he explores later in the album. I wouldn’t say he sounds like Jay Gordon of Orgy but there are similarities and I mean that as a compliment.
“Everybody in the world needs more than lies and consequences to power them.”
This is in the in-fold and is facing the CD itself as you open the CD case. The band’s art makes a lot of references to math and coding. Their art is littered with number strings, figures, circles, lines and angles but I really have little desire to search for their meaning in these after seeing how poorly they have applied the use of symbols thus far. The meaning of this image eludes and even bores me.
Fig 4: My Plague
I want to say that this track kinda lets us cool off from the intensity of the second and third track, but it isn’t by much. The subject of this song is disdain for egotistical people that just don’t seem to go away. Taken out of context the song is just another well orchestrated musical rant but if you’ve got someone in your life like this then the track may appeal to you more than the others on the album. It’s a Metal ode to a megalomaniacal person. What really stands out to me in this song is that the singer did exactly what I hoped he would do. He sings in this song and he does it well. I can’t even begin to fathom how you switch from a growl to a song voice mid-sentence, editing perhaps, but it’s really quite impressive. It’s the kind of singing style that had me purchasing every Fear Factory album ever made, sometimes twice just to get the bonus tracks. I really didn’t see this kind of musical versatility coming from this band and I find myself for the first time wondering what’s behind the masks.
“I don’t mind being ogled, ridiculed, made to feel miniscule. If you consider the source, it’s kinda pitiful.”
Fig 5: Everything Ends
I find myself hearing the music less and being drawn in by the singer. I guess the format of the band may be meant to dictate that seeing as how if it were really about the instruments they would have a solo. That is not to say the rest of the band isn’t nailing it down on every track because they most definitely are. I’m just not as impressed with them as I am with the lyrics and the singer. This may be due in part to that fact that I really didn’t think the band would have anything to say that I would be able to identify with or find interesting.
This track is about getting dumped and you can probably guess where the song goes after that. The lyrics aren’t particularly graphic or offensive but you do get the point. They never actually imply murder but I kinda get the feeling he’s already dead and she didn’t make it.
“I haven’t slept since I woke up and found my whole life was a lie.”
Fig 666: The Heretic Anthem
This song really has nothing to do with being an Anthem for Heretics and more to do with an old Metal tradition. Back in the day Metal bands used to have fight songs, usually if a band said it’s own name in the song then you could bet it was a fight song but name dropping yourself is not a prerequisite. The band is calling out naysayers, and did I mention that the drummer is a machine? This song isn’t going to mean anything to you unless you’ve become a serious Slipknot fan or you just like songs with vague references to 666 or heresy.
“Everbody’s so infatuated. Everybody’s so completely sure of what we are. Everybody defamates from miles away, but face to face, they haven’t got a thing to say.”
This is more of what I think of when I think of evil. It’s really kind of shocking because what happens is you reach in to grab the CD and what’s staring back at you from underneath it? That’s right it’s the aborted fetus of what I think is a greyhound. This is unnatural and offensive and that is the definition of evil in my mind. It is the only piece of Slipknot visual art that I think is actually what they intended. You can also see example of some of their coding on the side there.
Fig 7: Gently
This song starts with a really slow and sexy bass solo reminiscent of Danzig’s “Sadistikal” an the lead guitar comes in slow and slithers rather than pounding like a hammer which is what is most noticeable about it prior to this track. The musical ideas develop very slowly but I found it an enjoyable ride. After about a minute the bottom of the musical idea, the bass, drops out of the song and the singers talks of release. The lyrics are vague enough that you can pretty much insert whatever method of escapism you want into the song and it works, but I get the feeling it’s probably some sort of substance abuse that the singer is referring to. The song does eventually get heavy with the Metal after the first verse and I kinda wish that it didn’t.
“Yes, I will stay here for a while, for I need the break. A break from the pressures of life, and everything that lays in the palm of life’s hands.”
Fig 8: Left Behind
The music comes back to me in this song in that there’s some really great fret work and high speed muting (meaning killer guitar work). The song itself is about becoming stagnant in your own social circles which eventually leads to the invasion of social leaches. It’s a lamentation for a lack of change, which is akin to what some people feel as they grow old. If you heard this song on the radio you might not believe that it could be the band Slipknot. This song is even more impressive vocally when it comes to the switch between singing and growling.
“I’ve known faces that have disappeared in time. Find me wrapped in glass and slowly soaked in lime.”
Fig 9: The Shape
I don’t really feel like I was able to decipher what this song is about. It starts with the singer screaming what I think is, “Stay Strong.” This is what I got out of it…
Singer = Loses Shit
The last verse of the track the singer goes on a rant that is totally Metal. I don’t know what the point was but I look forward to listening to it every time the track comes around, definitely one of my favorite parts on the album. I guess the theme is disdain for life and devaluation of everything involved with it.
“Are you getting the picture?”
Fig 10: I am Hated
This is another pro Slipknot fight song. The pace of the lyrics here come across with the mechanical choppiness of well timed rap lyrics, that’s a good thing. They’re catchy, they stick in your head. I can see people “singing along” to this track at a live show. It lends itself to that. This is the only track where I noticed the DJ’s influence on the sound. I thought I heard his “wiki-wiki” after an f-bomb.
“Welcome to the same ol’ fucking scam.
Same ol’ shit in a dead fad.
Everybody wants to be so hard.
Are you real or a second rate sports card?
They all lost their dad or their wife just died.
They never got to go outside - SHUT UP
Nobody gives a fuck.
It doesn’t change the fact that you suck.”
Fig 11: Skin Ticket
I got lost on these lyrics. No idea what the singer was getting at but it sounded cool. This is the least Metal of the tracks on this album, with the exception of the intro track, but I want it this way. The guitars aren’t heavily distorted percussion instruments for most of this song. There are some really nice electronic parts with lyrical accompaniment that I think I could have just grooved on for the length of the track but the band is chasing a quite-loud format for this song to indicate some kind of climax. There’s really not enough to the lyrics in the song however to make me feel the need for a climax. The track ends in dissonant cacophony that I think is to represent the calmness of having expended all of your angst for the moment.
“Come see my cage - built in migraine,
Keeping myself alive through your empathy.”
Even their in-fold has a code in it. The in-fold folds out into four strips whose lengths are 1, 1, 2 and 5 in relation to each other when completely unfold. This could be the key to decoding some of the numbers strings in the album art, but is it really worth checking out? You decide. The strip of the in-fold that is the longest shows the masks that the band members were wearing for this album and some coding. I didn’t think it necessary to scan and post that whole thing. The picture above is also from the in-fold on the strip that is the second longest. The in-fold also contains another distorted goat picture, half of a picture of something’s mutilated carcass and a decent sized image of the Slipknot “S” logo that I think Burton C. Bell, the lead singer for Fear Factory, has tattooed on both of his forearms from elbow to wrist. The in-fold for this CD is extensive and includes all the lyrics. This is what I would expect and excellent in-fold to look like. The only things it is lacking are a “thanks” section and references to what kind of gear they use, but the band did have this to say,
“This has never been a popularity contest. The people we care for and work with know who they are and how we feel about them. Slipknot has never been into name-dropping. So we dedicate this album to the ones that matter most, our crazy fans and maggots all over the world. Stay (sic), fuckers.”
Admirable.
The cd itself is silver with a solid black state of Iowa on it. There is a purple seven pointed star enclosed within two circles laying on top of the black state. It’s nice but it’s nothing to scan and post.
Fig 12: New Abortion
I really didn’t enjoy this track. The music is flawlessly executed but next to the other tracks on this album I really didn’t find anything interesting here. The message of the song concerns the concept of a “big brother” of sorts and how that’s a bad thing and you should probably do something about it.
“This is where the line is drawn see,
You can’t take my soul away from me.”
Fig 13: Metabolic
This isn’t a great track musically although the lead guitar in the first verse sounds like some really good Slayer and it comes back a few times in the song. The lyrics are a great way to end the album and I say that because I’m not sure track 14 can really be considered a real song. They deal with the concept of becoming what you hate to defeat what you hate, becoming a monster to defeat a monster.
“(STOP) I’m always ready to die, but you’re killing me.”
Fig 14: Iowa
There are no lyrics in the in-fold for this track and it is fifteen minutes and three seconds long and it is all filled with music. There are no huge gaps of silence hiding bonus tracks, I hate when bands do that. It starts out with some noise music, edited screams of agony and a nice slow groovy melody. I think I’ve used the word “groovy” entirely too much for a review of a Metal album. This track tells the story of a murder. There’s no chorus here. It’s just one long homicidal jam session.
Overall I have to say that I was both surprised and impressed by this album. I can’t say that I’m going to go run out and buy all of the Slipknot albums that I can find. They did however move to their own little special place next to Machine Head as far as importance goes in my opinion. I’m not sure I’d recommend this album to everyone but it’s definitely worth trying if you’ve ever been curious about why the band got so popular so quickly. I’d have to say that the reasons are talent, skill and the ease with which they can be identified with by way of their lyrics.
Next up, Cradle of Filth’s “Cruelty and the Beast.”
(w/ special limited edition Bonus CD)
I have collected a lot of negative impressions concerning the band Slipknot. The band Slipknot are or were what I would consider mainstream but I’ve avoided them for a number of reasons. I am reviewing this album now only because I respect the opinion of the person who suggested it to me. I’d like to give you some of the reasons why I don’t like Slipknot.
There are nine freaking guys in this band, nine guys. That’s a veritable squad of musicians and that alone gives me the idea that this band produces a wall of sound that will make it impossible for me to pick out a melody or an instrument or anything. It also would lead me to believe that there are too many people involved in this creative process. I believe that having too many people in on a project like this could really blur the intent and turn a good idea into a jumbled mess. Let’s hope half of the crew just runs around on stage like maniacs for aesthetic effect.
Another thing that annoyed me about Slipknot was some of their visual art, particularly a t-shirt that I saw. I saw this t-shirt on some angry kid in a mall some years ago and at first glance I thought it was awesome so I looked a little closer. The premise of the design on the shirt was a red pentacle on a black background with some evil looking gibberish arranged around it. It’s the gibberish that turned me off. It was the word “Leviathan” in Hebrew. The idea that the shirt was trying to present was evil and the idea of “Leviathan” is really anything but. I’ll spare you the occult details and how the symbol on the t-shirt translates but basically the Leviathan is the expanse that separates man from God. It’s the suspension of disbelief that is a prerequisite for the existence free will. The t-shirt might as well have had a happy tree (tree as a symbol of growing from the earth to touch the heavens) on it, a red happy tree on a black background. Oooh spooky! If you’re going to try and market yourself as an evil bastard don’t wear the yellow Wal-Mart happy face, although that too is debatable.
I had also been told by several reliable sources that the band used mathematical formulas to come up with there music. Math is cool and all but the idea that this band had actual formulas to crank out chord patterns and distortion frequencies kind of made me feel like they had no creativity at all other than perhaps the original method of translating the formulas from paper to a musical format. The whole idea kind of bored me once the newness of the concept wore off.
Slipknot didn’t just show up on the scene, they exploded. I had never heard of them and then all of a sudden I was seeing their t-shirts and merchandise everywhere. I’ve always been turned off by events like this. When everyone jumps on the same boat really quickly, I start looking for another boat.
None of my reasons for not liking Slipknot really had any validity and as it turns out some of them were just plain wrong but with so much good music out there that I knew about, these reasons were enough to keep me from purchasing anything by these nine musical luchiadores. Oh yeah, have I mentioned that the entire band wears jumpsuits and masks? Apparently that is to keep the focus on their music and get away from making too much of the actual band members. Tool has a similar attitude with their excessively dark live performances and I can respect that. I do think the mask have become more of a marketing tool whether or not that was the band’s original intent.
I recently did some internet research which can hardly be a credible source of information but here is what I found. There is little mention of the math Metal in relation to the music of Slipknot other than to say that they play with precision in a technical sense, so the frequency formula thing is probably bunk. The 9 band members do in fact all play instruments of sorts. Two band members play electronic instruments, i.e. a DJ and a sampler, and another two of the members play the drums that kids march with in high school bands. They literally walk around stage wearing what I think are snare drums and that is their instrument… I’m not really sure what this does for the band’s sound, maybe if you really really want your friend in the band then this is what you do?
This is the album cover and I think it is pretty badass. The colors are really a little brighter than I’d like but maybe that’s to hint at some kind of departure from the typical sense of evil that the goat head might represent. The goat by the way is another jacked up symbol. The goat or scapegoat is an animal you use to carry the weight of your sin and is usually killed or sent off into the desert to die. You use a scapegoat to cover your ass when you’ve done something wrong. With that in mind how is Jesus not a scapegoat? I’m not trying to slander Jesus I’m just saying that maybe the goat was a poor symbol for the Church of Satan to use as their mascot.
Fig 1: {515}
This is an introductory track that is actually pretty cool if you’re into noise music. There are no easily recognizable instruments and the only sense of rhythm that you get is from a noise generator producing some nice undulating patterns. There are chopped up bits of screams of agony that are cut and arranged in such a way that they never really begin or end they just kind of shuffle and stutter along the track in a disorienting and somewhat amusing fashion. I wish this track were longer and had a few more musical ideas thrown into it. The track is only sixty seconds long, but alas this is a Metal band and this track is probably just an attempt at being creepy that accidentally turned into a nice piece of noise music. The band labels the tracks figures instead of tracks so I have done the same here.
Fig 2: People = Shit
I hope you didn’t turn up your speakers to attempt to listen closely to the first track in an attempt to hear what might be spoken underneath the heavily edited cries because if you did then you just got monkey stomped on the skull by nine guys who are bat-shit crazy. I have to say right from the start that I like the title of this track. The drummer in this band is a freaking machine and if you get to close to the singer while he is singing it seems like your face might get bitten off completely, or at least that’s what I got out of the first 15 seconds of this track which sounds like an evil band warming up. The lyrics actually address a topic that I can identify with. At it’s core, that is underneath the epithets concerning brutality and angst which are meant to be emasculating, there is the concept of a person who tries to be an overachiever and only gives himself credit for failure. I know a lot of people who are like that actually. I myself give too much credence to the things that I screw up. The idea behind the references to violence here is that when you feel like you’ve nothing to lose then nothing has value whether the subjects is you or someone else. The track is catchy and after listening to the album several times this is the one that is easily most identifiable to me. If I am going somewhere to kick someone’s ass and I want a soundtrack, this song is definitely a contender, that is if I don’t have any Hatebreed available and that’s saying a lot in my opinion.
“I’m not afraid to cry, but that’s none of your business!”
The first part of this lyric is almost whimpered and the second part is a jarring and angry yell. This is easily on of the most communicative and memorable lines on the album.
Fig 3: Disasterpiece
The first verse describes a physically brutal act that is easily the most horrible thing that I have ever read. I want to quote it because I can’t get it out of my head. It’s like a train wreck that you just have to look at. It was difficult to address the rest of the song after that verse. This song voices a brutal disdain for dishonesty, a concept that I am all to ready to identify with and the music is dead on. If the first track is the trip to the beating then this track is right on time for the execution of some meat pounding. If you have a neck, and weren’t scared off by the first verse, then you are going to head bang to this track. Towards the end of the song the lead singer comes down from his angry yells to hint at some vocal versatility that I hope he explores later in the album. I wouldn’t say he sounds like Jay Gordon of Orgy but there are similarities and I mean that as a compliment.
“Everybody in the world needs more than lies and consequences to power them.”
This is in the in-fold and is facing the CD itself as you open the CD case. The band’s art makes a lot of references to math and coding. Their art is littered with number strings, figures, circles, lines and angles but I really have little desire to search for their meaning in these after seeing how poorly they have applied the use of symbols thus far. The meaning of this image eludes and even bores me.
Fig 4: My Plague
I want to say that this track kinda lets us cool off from the intensity of the second and third track, but it isn’t by much. The subject of this song is disdain for egotistical people that just don’t seem to go away. Taken out of context the song is just another well orchestrated musical rant but if you’ve got someone in your life like this then the track may appeal to you more than the others on the album. It’s a Metal ode to a megalomaniacal person. What really stands out to me in this song is that the singer did exactly what I hoped he would do. He sings in this song and he does it well. I can’t even begin to fathom how you switch from a growl to a song voice mid-sentence, editing perhaps, but it’s really quite impressive. It’s the kind of singing style that had me purchasing every Fear Factory album ever made, sometimes twice just to get the bonus tracks. I really didn’t see this kind of musical versatility coming from this band and I find myself for the first time wondering what’s behind the masks.
“I don’t mind being ogled, ridiculed, made to feel miniscule. If you consider the source, it’s kinda pitiful.”
Fig 5: Everything Ends
I find myself hearing the music less and being drawn in by the singer. I guess the format of the band may be meant to dictate that seeing as how if it were really about the instruments they would have a solo. That is not to say the rest of the band isn’t nailing it down on every track because they most definitely are. I’m just not as impressed with them as I am with the lyrics and the singer. This may be due in part to that fact that I really didn’t think the band would have anything to say that I would be able to identify with or find interesting.
This track is about getting dumped and you can probably guess where the song goes after that. The lyrics aren’t particularly graphic or offensive but you do get the point. They never actually imply murder but I kinda get the feeling he’s already dead and she didn’t make it.
“I haven’t slept since I woke up and found my whole life was a lie.”
Fig 666: The Heretic Anthem
This song really has nothing to do with being an Anthem for Heretics and more to do with an old Metal tradition. Back in the day Metal bands used to have fight songs, usually if a band said it’s own name in the song then you could bet it was a fight song but name dropping yourself is not a prerequisite. The band is calling out naysayers, and did I mention that the drummer is a machine? This song isn’t going to mean anything to you unless you’ve become a serious Slipknot fan or you just like songs with vague references to 666 or heresy.
“Everbody’s so infatuated. Everybody’s so completely sure of what we are. Everybody defamates from miles away, but face to face, they haven’t got a thing to say.”
This is more of what I think of when I think of evil. It’s really kind of shocking because what happens is you reach in to grab the CD and what’s staring back at you from underneath it? That’s right it’s the aborted fetus of what I think is a greyhound. This is unnatural and offensive and that is the definition of evil in my mind. It is the only piece of Slipknot visual art that I think is actually what they intended. You can also see example of some of their coding on the side there.
Fig 7: Gently
This song starts with a really slow and sexy bass solo reminiscent of Danzig’s “Sadistikal” an the lead guitar comes in slow and slithers rather than pounding like a hammer which is what is most noticeable about it prior to this track. The musical ideas develop very slowly but I found it an enjoyable ride. After about a minute the bottom of the musical idea, the bass, drops out of the song and the singers talks of release. The lyrics are vague enough that you can pretty much insert whatever method of escapism you want into the song and it works, but I get the feeling it’s probably some sort of substance abuse that the singer is referring to. The song does eventually get heavy with the Metal after the first verse and I kinda wish that it didn’t.
“Yes, I will stay here for a while, for I need the break. A break from the pressures of life, and everything that lays in the palm of life’s hands.”
Fig 8: Left Behind
The music comes back to me in this song in that there’s some really great fret work and high speed muting (meaning killer guitar work). The song itself is about becoming stagnant in your own social circles which eventually leads to the invasion of social leaches. It’s a lamentation for a lack of change, which is akin to what some people feel as they grow old. If you heard this song on the radio you might not believe that it could be the band Slipknot. This song is even more impressive vocally when it comes to the switch between singing and growling.
“I’ve known faces that have disappeared in time. Find me wrapped in glass and slowly soaked in lime.”
Fig 9: The Shape
I don’t really feel like I was able to decipher what this song is about. It starts with the singer screaming what I think is, “Stay Strong.” This is what I got out of it…
Singer = Loses Shit
The last verse of the track the singer goes on a rant that is totally Metal. I don’t know what the point was but I look forward to listening to it every time the track comes around, definitely one of my favorite parts on the album. I guess the theme is disdain for life and devaluation of everything involved with it.
“Are you getting the picture?”
Fig 10: I am Hated
This is another pro Slipknot fight song. The pace of the lyrics here come across with the mechanical choppiness of well timed rap lyrics, that’s a good thing. They’re catchy, they stick in your head. I can see people “singing along” to this track at a live show. It lends itself to that. This is the only track where I noticed the DJ’s influence on the sound. I thought I heard his “wiki-wiki” after an f-bomb.
“Welcome to the same ol’ fucking scam.
Same ol’ shit in a dead fad.
Everybody wants to be so hard.
Are you real or a second rate sports card?
They all lost their dad or their wife just died.
They never got to go outside - SHUT UP
Nobody gives a fuck.
It doesn’t change the fact that you suck.”
Fig 11: Skin Ticket
I got lost on these lyrics. No idea what the singer was getting at but it sounded cool. This is the least Metal of the tracks on this album, with the exception of the intro track, but I want it this way. The guitars aren’t heavily distorted percussion instruments for most of this song. There are some really nice electronic parts with lyrical accompaniment that I think I could have just grooved on for the length of the track but the band is chasing a quite-loud format for this song to indicate some kind of climax. There’s really not enough to the lyrics in the song however to make me feel the need for a climax. The track ends in dissonant cacophony that I think is to represent the calmness of having expended all of your angst for the moment.
“Come see my cage - built in migraine,
Keeping myself alive through your empathy.”
Even their in-fold has a code in it. The in-fold folds out into four strips whose lengths are 1, 1, 2 and 5 in relation to each other when completely unfold. This could be the key to decoding some of the numbers strings in the album art, but is it really worth checking out? You decide. The strip of the in-fold that is the longest shows the masks that the band members were wearing for this album and some coding. I didn’t think it necessary to scan and post that whole thing. The picture above is also from the in-fold on the strip that is the second longest. The in-fold also contains another distorted goat picture, half of a picture of something’s mutilated carcass and a decent sized image of the Slipknot “S” logo that I think Burton C. Bell, the lead singer for Fear Factory, has tattooed on both of his forearms from elbow to wrist. The in-fold for this CD is extensive and includes all the lyrics. This is what I would expect and excellent in-fold to look like. The only things it is lacking are a “thanks” section and references to what kind of gear they use, but the band did have this to say,
“This has never been a popularity contest. The people we care for and work with know who they are and how we feel about them. Slipknot has never been into name-dropping. So we dedicate this album to the ones that matter most, our crazy fans and maggots all over the world. Stay (sic), fuckers.”
Admirable.
The cd itself is silver with a solid black state of Iowa on it. There is a purple seven pointed star enclosed within two circles laying on top of the black state. It’s nice but it’s nothing to scan and post.
Fig 12: New Abortion
I really didn’t enjoy this track. The music is flawlessly executed but next to the other tracks on this album I really didn’t find anything interesting here. The message of the song concerns the concept of a “big brother” of sorts and how that’s a bad thing and you should probably do something about it.
“This is where the line is drawn see,
You can’t take my soul away from me.”
Fig 13: Metabolic
This isn’t a great track musically although the lead guitar in the first verse sounds like some really good Slayer and it comes back a few times in the song. The lyrics are a great way to end the album and I say that because I’m not sure track 14 can really be considered a real song. They deal with the concept of becoming what you hate to defeat what you hate, becoming a monster to defeat a monster.
“(STOP) I’m always ready to die, but you’re killing me.”
Fig 14: Iowa
There are no lyrics in the in-fold for this track and it is fifteen minutes and three seconds long and it is all filled with music. There are no huge gaps of silence hiding bonus tracks, I hate when bands do that. It starts out with some noise music, edited screams of agony and a nice slow groovy melody. I think I’ve used the word “groovy” entirely too much for a review of a Metal album. This track tells the story of a murder. There’s no chorus here. It’s just one long homicidal jam session.
Overall I have to say that I was both surprised and impressed by this album. I can’t say that I’m going to go run out and buy all of the Slipknot albums that I can find. They did however move to their own little special place next to Machine Head as far as importance goes in my opinion. I’m not sure I’d recommend this album to everyone but it’s definitely worth trying if you’ve ever been curious about why the band got so popular so quickly. I’d have to say that the reasons are talent, skill and the ease with which they can be identified with by way of their lyrics.
Next up, Cradle of Filth’s “Cruelty and the Beast.”
(w/ special limited edition Bonus CD)