SLIPKNOT give their demons a full workout.
We Are Not Your Kind ROADRUNNER
Metal’s masked maniacs still refuse to conform
SUCH IS THE reverence attained in the 20 years since their self-titled debut, there are very few events in our world as fanatically venerated as a new Slipknot record. Yet even the most dedicated maggot would struggle to defend 2008’s All Hope Is Gone or 2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter as enthusiastically as the band’s untouchable opening triumvirate, both being often great but occasionally forgettable. Though few metal acts of their or any other era can carry that same youthful vigour and savage outlet for years and years after their initial success, there’s always been the hope that Slipknot were impervious to the cruel hands of time. But while that sense of knife-edged danger and excitement was still emitted once the masks and boiler suits were donned in the live setting, it was starting to diminish on record.
Thankfully, not only have the band’s recent shows proven that the Iowans still leave a trail of exhilarating destruction in their wake onstage, but the urgent recent singles, 2018’s All Out Life and this year’s Unsainted, offered welcome evidence the band are more than capable of delivering that rabid clatter of percussion, fiendish riffs, demented scratches and stabs of electronics that still sounds unlike anything else. The defiant proclamation of the former provided the album with a title, so to see it omitted from the final cut is perplexing, yet its maniacal bluster is evident throughout the album, with the nine members clearly having plenty of fire and clawing demons that need exorcising. But while halfway track Red Flag is a breathless rush from beginning to end, each of the album’s other seething blasts is met with an ominous trip into uncomfortable realms and/or a massive vocal from one of, if not the best singers in our game, as shown by Unsainted’s undeniable hook. Whether it’s
Nero Forte’s lumbering battering that meets a creepily angelic chorus or the militaristic beats and warped squall of effects throughout Orphan, We Are Not Your Kind offers plenty of new ways to tweak the established, anthemic Slipknot formula.
As ever there are different apparitions lurking behind every corner. Birth Of The Cruel sees a deformed monstrosity lurching and contorting itself out of the nu metal graveyard, the twisted lullaby of My Pain descends into a fog of dystopian synths, while the minimalist Spiders, with its eerie John Carpenter piano, gets more sinister with every listen. But it’s the more mournful The Liar’s Funeral and the penultimate Not Long For This World that leave the biggest impact, with Corey Taylor at both his most vulnerable and assured over a tragic tapestry of unsettling synthetic atmosphere and huge cinematic peaks. Ending with Solway Firth’s climactic presence that builds through a melée of crashing drums and precision melodic riffs, it’s as dramatic conclusion to an album that the band have yet achieved.
While many will naturally but unfavourably compare it to the triumphs of yesteryear, We Are Not Your Kind, though far from flawless, can stand on its own merits, being both immediately arresting as well as having enough challenging depth to reveal new surprises with every listen. Fierce, troubled, confrontational and more often than not bewildering, there’s still no one else on the planet like Slipknot.
FOR FANS OF: Korn, System Of A Down, Rammstein