Is Corey Taylor trying to tell us something?

Slipknot’s lead vocalist is not exactly Mr Sunshine at the best of times, and the Iowan nonet’s music and outlook are nothing if not bipolar, but the sheer number of death references and metaphors on 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind album is exhausting. I’m not even sure he knows he did it – a lot of the record seems to be about the breakdown of a relationship while the title suggests alienation. I’ve previously accused this of being teenage angst, but it could well be political in these strange times of ours. Who exactly it is Taylor et.al are still craving acceptance from 20 years down the line, and why they still care, I am not sure.

Well anyway, I’d thought I’d round up all of the references to death and killing. I shouldn’t criticise too much (or at all, really) given I couldn’t write a lyric to save my life (this choice of words was not initially intentional) but I thought it was interesting. Either Mr Taylor is trying to tell us something or perhaps he could branch out a little next time, linguistically, given on this album he did the death metaphor…to death. Ahem.

1. Track 1 – Insert Coin
1. Sole lyric (a reference to the later track “Solway Firth”) “I’m counting all the killers”
2. Track 2 – Unsainted
1. “I’ll never kill myself to save my soul”
2. “this killing field is all grown over”
3. “you’ve killed the saint in me”
4. “how dare you martyr me”
3. Track 3 – Birth of the Cruel
1. “death of the fool, birth of the cruel”
4. Track 4 – Death Because of Death
5. Track 6 – Critical Darling
1. “put faith in a life support”
2. “celebrate the dead”
6. Track 7 – A Liar’s Funeral
1. “December in the summer kills the heart…I guess I have to die to play my part”
7. Track 8 – Red Flag
1. “they’ll eat you alive just to kill you”
8. Track 10 – Spiders
1. “…a martyr’s pet…”
9. Track 11 – Orphan
1. “we take the lives”
2. “the one who killed your world”
3. “dying in a dumpster”
4. “…sell myself to stay alive?”
10. Track 13 – Not Long for this World
1. “Not long for this world”
2. “…tell me how I’m gonna die”
11. Track 14 – Solway Firth
1. “I’m counting all the killers”
2. “I found my bottom line dead on the front lines”
3. “…you taught me how to die”

So there you have it. It turns out that, for once, one of my wild generalisations is actually backed up by the evidence (thanks to genius.com for the lyrics) – 11/14 = 79 per cent (11/13 = 85 per cent if one discounts the instrumental track “What’s Next”) of the songs have some sort of death reference in the lyrics. I tried to avoid listing out minor variations of the same lyric but I may have missed some others.

Best music of 2003

See “Best of 2008” for a general introduction.

Be warned fair readers. As we step back in time from around here we’re getting into when nu-metal and other things that haven’t dated super well were around. And that probably won’t all be ignored because I was into some of it, even if most of that I haven’t listened to with anything approaching regularity for years.

2003 was a minorly historical year for a number of big names. For example, 2003 was the year of…Metallica’s St.Anger! Full disclosure, I didn’t hate it at the time and still don’t, but yes the snare drum sound is horrible, yes the record is about half an hour too long (but there are 40 or so minutes of decent music buried within the bloated 70+ minute running time), no there are no guitar solos, yes some of the lyrics are the worst they ever wrote (sadly, past the first four albums, that’s saying something). As opposed to, say, Iron Maiden, who largely make the same record over and over again (apparently AC/DC are the generally considered poster children for that), Metallica do perhaps get points for trying new things every so often. I did really like 2008’s Death Magnetic, except the cheap and empty sounding production (apparently the guitar hero version of the album sounds better!), but thought 2016’s Hardwired… was Metallica by numbers. Poor chaps can’t win – I’d say they’re laughing all the way to the bank but I’m pretty sure they take it all very seriously.

What else did we have? Ah yes, Muse’s Absolution. Of course we had that song with that bassline, and this, the prog/alt trio’s third record is the point at which they shook off the Radiohead cover band label once and for all, but it is also the bridge to the overblown ridiculousness that followed.

A Perfect Circle’s sophomore effort, Thirteenth Step, had plenty of great tracks and moments, but I don’t think if I’d heard it first it would have had the impact on me of the debut.

Deftones’ self-titled record has some of the greatest songs of their career (Hexagram, Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event, Moana) but also some of the most generic and uninspired. And as much as I adore Chino Moreno’s Team Sleep I don’t think Lucky You was a particularly successful experiment – better than Pink Cellphone on 2006’s Saturday Night Wrist perhaps, but as an overall album I think the latter wins out.

2003 is when The Darkness happened. I don’t know if they ended up saving Rock n Roll, but it was fun at the time.

On the other hand, 2003 is home to some of my most favouritest albums of all time.

AFI – Sing the Sorrow

While this is the point the Ukiah, California goth punks “sold out” (and joined a major label, etc), this album is for this AFI fan an epic and masterful piece of art. I suppose if AFI had stuck with their album formula (intro track, end on a ballad, secret track) forever it would have got tired (we had it for one more album, decemberunderground) but here they retained it and perfected it. Granted, the album end is ambitious, arty, and experimental and doesn’t quite (nearly, but not quite) have as timeless a ballad as God Called in Sick Today or Morningstar, intro track Miseria Cantare – The Beginning is easily as good as Strength Through Wounding. Although here is where they introduced electronic elements, it is also where they showed how objectively great musicians they are, and there are a plethora of banging tunes in among the beautiful deep cuts. Finally, it is the last time Davey Havok’s lyrics were truly poetic and beguiling, rather than the teenage-y nonsense that has dogged every release since.

Cave In – Antenna

Speaking of selling out, this is an alternative rock album. Cave In’s first album was incredibly growly metal and their second was “space rock”. Antenna was so radio-friendly, melodic, and infectious I can’t quite believe it didn’t go massive. I imagine if I’d been a fan of the previous work at the time I would have found this distasteful, but as the entry point I absolutely loved it. Yet another example of a band showing how they can pen great tunes if they want to. It’s like modern art – when stuff “my five year old could have done” is done by someone who could quite easily paint a realistic picture of a nice tree if they wanted to, that’s what makes it art.

Coheed and Cambria – In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3

Is this the quintessential Coheed and Cambria record? Very possibly. I think it best straddles the pop-punk-adjacency of singer/guitarist/world-building/comic-book-writing Claudio Sanchez and company’s debut the year before and the proggier material that came after (they returned to pop, briefly, for 2015’s The Color Before the Sun). So while we still have belters like A Favor House Atlantic, we also have epics (the title track), suites (The Camper Velorium I-III) and a lovely instance of the gorgeous little recurring theme (arguably perfected on Keeping the Blade on the next album) The Ring in Return.

Cult of Luna – The Beyond

I told you the Swedish post-metal masters would crop up again. There was a time when I found music too heavy. I remember there was a compilation CD from a magazine like Metal Hammer which featured the CoL track The Watchtower from this album. I found it far too extreme, but that didn’t last long. It certainly is heavy (the production afforded by a band with day jobs on their second album actually helps this) and perhaps contains less light and shade, less respite, if you will, from the punishing attack, than we got later on but it is still intelligent, and not a little political.

Dream Theater – Train of Thought

A friend had given me Images and Words on tape a few years before and I found it super cheesy (I mean, I still do, but I love it nonetheless). Back during the Portnoy days when DT wore their influences on their sleeves (6 Degrees of Inner Turbulence – Tool, Octavarium – Muse), Train of Thought was their Slipknot album. Or at least a heavy metal album with distortion and riffs, y’know? Given when DT try to go it alone it doesn’t often work (great playing, OK-at-best song-writing) it really helped to have the whirlwind of a personality that is drummer-extraordinaire Mr Mike Portnoy around to inject those influences (and movie samples!) and make it interesting. Well anyway, ToT has some of my favourite DT tracks and solos on it, but it was my first album of theirs I gave the time of day to, so it gets extra points for that.

Envy – A Dead Sinking Story

The problem I have with this Japanese post-hardcore / post-metal outfit is that I got into them via the Invariable Will, Recurring Ebbs and Flows 14 LP box set, so I find it difficult to pinpoint things about certain albums. That said, when I was reminding myself about 2003 albums, I noted this down, then only this morning found it on two independent best ever post-metal albums lists, then I listened to it and remembered how amazing it is. Still a bit screamo though, mind.

Explosions in the Sky – The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place

I’m getting the impression that in the post-rock world, it is cool to hate these guys - their music I mean. I wonder if that’s something to do with its genre purity (in the same way as Mozart is a great example to show to an alien what classical music is, but there is way more interesting classical music in the canon) and ubiquity (background music for TV). If most other post-rock bands put a spin on it, EITS’s USP is that they don’t, perhaps. They are a centre point from which others branch out. Shoulders on which to stand to see further. Etc. There’s nothing wrong with a group of guys in a garage (or a rented house) with their instruments coming up with something beautiful.

Four Tet – Rounds

Talented and prolific electronic producer Kieran Hebden’s second best, or at least second most ‘classic’ album (after Pause)? Yes I’d say so. But from a quick look at Wikipedia it seems the professionals would have it the other way around. So what do I know.

Hell is for Heroes - The Neon Handshake

[EDIT March 23 - how could I have forgotten this?] I didn't get into HIFH until after the second album, 2006's Transmit Disrupt, so I tend not to distinguish between the first two records too much. I gather than most fans do, however, preferring the debut (2007's self-titled final album before the band broke up was underrated). It's not difficult to see why it's so beloved, ticking every conceivable box as it does - beautiful picked-guitar quiet bits, big riffs, strong melodies, alternative screamy vocals, passionate delivery, better than decent musicianship, catchy song-writing, a sprinkling of originality. Right time, right place, but perhaps you had to be there.

Joss Stone – The Soul Sessions

Stone at her most soulful, most respectful, and by far the least annoying. Except the White Stripes’ cover, perhaps, but I don’t really have an issue with that either. A pure and relatively subtle and understated piece of work.

Mogwai – Happy Songs for Happy People

I have no idea what my favourite Scottish post-rock album is. I know it isn’t Young Team (I’m not trying to be edgy, I just don’t think it’s that mature) but other than that… I think HSfHP is up there, not least because of epic centrepiece Ratts of the Capital. On one hand I think it’s a good entry point for Mogwai – lots of guitar, mostly quite pretty, but it is also quite synth-heavy and processed. Perhaps not enough of a range, for some? I say this because when trying to force more post-rock on people who are unfortunate enough to tell me they like Sigur Ros or something, among the EITS, TWDY, Mono, etc I have often dug out my CD copy of this. And it’s never caught. Strange.

Opeth - Damnation

Take all the pretty quiet bits out of Opeth songs and make a whole album out of them (so no cookie monster vocals or heavy distortion, for example) and this is what you get. A brave but successful move by the genre-bending Swedes. To this day I find it slightly unsettling that of the brace of albums of which this one, Deliverance came first. One might have hoped it was the other way around! (I’m talking about the concept of the titles here, not the music.)

Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts of the Great Highway

I haven’t listened to anything between this and 2014 masterpiece Benji, so I can’t say for sure that this is the most accessible record Mark Kozelek put his name to, but it must be up there. It is the shortest Sun Kil Moon album (ignoring the Modest Mouse covers record), at least! It is mostly more straight-forward and song based rather than 10 minutes of Kozelek telling a rambling story over music (on a record like Benji absolutely nowhere near as awful as it sounds) but still manages to feature the 15 minute epic Duk Koo Kim. If someone asks me what SkM sounds like my knee-jerk reaction is to say one man with a guitar minimalism, but there’s certainly a full band on this one, and it even gets a little Jesu (they have collaborated on occasion) in places.

The Mars Volta – Deloused in the Comatorium

Even with the two minutes of sparse noise in the middle of Cicatriz ESP, and ignoring the bonus track Ambuletz, this record is absolute perfection from start to finish. If someone hardwired my brain and said, from this note, what is the best note for you that could come next, this album would result (meaning that for someone else it would be completely different!). It still sounds both like the past (salsa, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Miles Davis, a little bit of At the Drive-In) and a futuristic sci-fi fever dream (or rat-poison induced coma). Stream of consciousness nonsense they may be, but still some of my favourite lyrics ever. For a while this album was my sun around which all other music orbited (I went to see The Mars Volta 11 times, including a NYE show in San Francisco) and although I don’t listen to it as much these days as I still do Tool’s Lateralus it still holds an enormously special place in my heart.

Thursday – War all the Time

This is what post-hardcore and emo sounds like done with a bit of intelligence and authority. It doesn’t quite hit the same highs for me as Full Collapse does with a song like Paris in Flames, but it is still a stunning record with many highlights like the huge opening smack in the face of For the Workforce, Drowning, catchy scream-along (single-worthy but wasn’t) Division St, twinkling interlude This Song Brought to You by a Falling Bomb (which I learned on piano, once upon a time), and anti-homophobic M.Shepard (equating the panicky killing of the eponymous student with pulling the wings from a butterfly). I have a lot of respect for ostensibly genre bands where the music is actually objectively interesting and the members could play different music if they wanted to (it means that what sounds like talentless noise to you, which is a criticism you hear a lot if you’re in to heavy or alternative music, is actually music and art in the true sense) – here for example, I once read a review complementing the alchemy of Thursday’s two-guitar approach. I think that hit the nail on the head – see a song like Love Has Led Us Astray for an example (awkwardly not on WatT but it’s the one that springs to mind). Great drumming too. While frontman Geoff Rickley’s vocals have attracted raised eyebrows in the past (he had the nickname “Tone Geoff” in his inner circle for a while, apparently), his screams and strongly literature-influenced lyrics are up there with the best of them.

A playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6mL5XqrZlGazWwH9jdIn7y?si=C_W1Gi59R92SVm5Y7wd-Pg

1. A Perfect Circle – Weak and Powerless
2. AFI – The Leaving Song Pt.II
3. Biffy Clyro – The Ideal Height
4. Brand New – Sic Transit Gloria – Glory Fades
5. Cave In – Youth Overrided
6. Coheed and Cambria – A Favor House Atlantic
7. Cult of Luna – The Watchtower
8. Deftones – Hexagram
9. Dream Theater – As I Am
10. Elbow – Grace Under Pressure
11. Envy – Chain Wandering Deeply
12. Evanescence – Tourniquet
13. Every Time I Die – Floater
14. Explosions in the Sky – First Breath After Coma
15. Four Tet – She Moves She
16. Funeral for a Friend – Juneau
17. Hell is for Heroes - Night Vision
18. HIM – Endless Dark
19. Iron Maiden - Rainmaker
20. Joss Stone – Super Duper Love
21. Kings of Leon – California Waiting
22. Korn – Counting on Me
23. Lamb of God – Ruin
24. Machine Head – Elegy
25. Mogwai – Hunted by a Freak
26. Muse – Hysteria
27. My Morning Jacket – One Big Holiday
28. Opeth – Windowpane
29. Placebo – The Bitter End
30. Prefuse 73 – The End of Biters – International
31. Radiohead – Sit Down, Stand Up
32. SikTh – Scent of the Obscene
33. Snow Patrol – Run
34. Sun Kil Moon – Carry Me Ohio
35. Superjoint Ritual – Sickness
36. The Darkness – I Believe in a Thing Called Love
37. The Mars Volta – Drunkship of Lanterns
38. The Pineapple Thief – Vapour Trails
39. Thursday – For the Workforce, Drowning
40. Zwan – Of a Broken Heart

Best music of 2004

See “Best of 2008” for a general introduction.

I’ve been saying these were my formative years, but I’m not entirely sure how many of my favourite records of 2004 I got into at the time. Some, definitely, like Slipknot, Head Automatica and 36 Crazyfists, but most of the rest? It wasn’t long after this that I fell bigtime for John Frusciante, Isis, Mastodon, and Cult of Luna. Others like Converge, Killswitch Engage, Lamb of God, Melvins, Mono, and Joss Stone came a bit later. I’m not sure what the point of that was, other than to reinforce something I already said (in my 2008 best-of post) about hindsight. While it also serves to highlight the arbitrariness of 1 January – 31 December release times it is of course still possible to place a lot of music in its historical and cultural context.

Well anyway, try these on for size.

36 Crazyfists – A Snow Capped Romance

I swear I wasn’t trying to be edgy, but when Slipknot’s Iowa and System of a Down’s Toxicity albums came out, I didn’t think much of either. The odd track aside, I never really changed my mind on that. 36 Crazyfists’ second (major label) album, on the other hand, I did grow to love. Here’s what I said in my 3-star review on amazon:

“After the sheer (granted, nu-metal but done with so much class!) spectacularly excellent debut Bitterness The Star I was expecting a lot from A Snow Capped Romance. But apart from the stand-out first two tracks it kind of goes downhill from there. The bass and vocals and, well, everything really, seem exactly the same in every mediocre song past this point!...it seems the mighty 36CF have shrunk to nothing but a heavier Linkin Park (…Brock's vocal work is nothing short of amazing). But ASCR is just not good enough to hold a candle to the first album, or much else either, even Linkin Park. For an album crammed with classics, check out "Bitterness the Star".”

What utter nonsense! It is much slicker than BtS, sure, but how can I describe a second album half that contains Installing the Catheter and (the beautiful interlude) Song for the Fisherman as “mediocre”. Madness. The wintry artwork (a lot of hearts in Roadrunner Records album artwork around this time – see: 36 CF’s next album, Killswitch Engage) and provenance of the band cemented my still-held desire to visit Alaska (it was many years later I discovered things like red states and Sarah Palin, but still).

65daysofstatic – The Fall of Math

The debut album from the Sheffield experimental electronic post-rock quartet. Generally considered to be their magnum opus and something of an iconic record, which considering their career since is no small praise. I saw them play the whole thing at the tenth anniversary shows, but I got the impression that the band member with the microphone wasn’t a fan of this type of show - he seemed more interested in playing their most recent material, but, hey, we got both.

Converge – You Fail Me

I already said I prefer 2006’s No Heroes to this, but it is still home to many of Converge’s best loved ragers (Last Light, with its crowd-pleasing scream-along refrain “This. Is. For. The hearts. Still. Beating.” and Black Cloud, for example). I don’t think its quiet moments are their best but elsewhere it’s Converge at the top of the game. A great example of how to follow up a masterpiece (2001’s Jane Doe).

Cult of Luna – Salvation

This doesn’t get as much love as 2006’s Somewhere Along the Highway, but it probably should. It contains some of the Swedish post-metallers’ finest moments (Leave Me Here, the clean and quiet Crossing Over) but perhaps serves as a bridge between the less polished first two records and what came later. Unlike, 2013’s Vertikal, though, the rest of the album holds up too, as a masterclass in the post-metal quiet/loud build/explode tension/release standards of song-writing. I realise that while this is the third (going backwards in time from 2019) (probably not the last) incidence of me thinking CoL put out one of the best albums of the year, they’re one of my favourite bands because their albums fit that criteria and not the other way around.

edIT - Crying Over Pros for no Reason

A beautiful and emotive slice of glitchy electronica. There was one more album in 2007 but it's a pity we didn't hear more from producer Edward Ma.

Head Automatica – Decadence

As many people who know me know, I’m not overly into party music (or generally any happy or non-serious music of any kind) but occasionally a record will come along that is so fun and so damn infectious I can’t help but get into it. The fact that the vocalist is Glassjaw’s Daryl Palumbo helped a lot too of course. And if even the chorus of a song called “Dance Party Plus” manages to be poignantly beautiful you’ve got something truly transcendent on your hands.

ISIS (the band) – Panopticon

Some more post-metal for your cathartic pleasure, if you please. If 2002’s Oceanic was ISIS’s green album, this is the blue album, named after the philosophical idea of a circular prison with a guard tower in the middle and nowhere to hide. I’m not a huge fan of 2000’s Celestial so I consider Panopticon the middle of ISIS’s ‘great trilogy’ (a concept I will continue to flog long past its death) and possibly their magnum opus – more powerful than 2006’s In the Absence of Truth but more polished than Oceanic.

John Frusciante – Automatic Writing (with Josh Klinghoffer and Joe Lally, under the name Ataxia) / Shadows Collide with People / A Sphere in the Heart of Silence (with Josh Klinghoffer)

A bit of a cheat putting in three records here perhaps but a) I nearly put The Will to Death in as well and b) it’s not without precedent (e.g. last year’s post-rock round-up). But anyway, the point is this was an incredibly prolific time for the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist (as he was at the time) – as well as the aforementioned he also released the album Inside of Emptiness and the DC EP (together with 2005’s Curtains, and excluding Shadows Collide with People, these six records formed Frusciante’s “Record Collection” releases (a record label on which he has since continued to release solo records)).

Shadows Collide with People is in large part a straight-forward folk/rock record (but with plenty of sound effects and other things thrown in to mess with that categorisation), it features Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on a couple of tracks (this makes me think I would have got into Frusciante’s solo work even without the strong influence of a super-fan friend of mine), and is possibly my favourite of all Frusciante’s solo records.

Sphere is heavily electronic and often very beautiful. A good late night record if one is feeling a little emotional.

Automatic Writing is a guitar/bass/drum garage-jam album between Frusciante, Klinghoffer, and Fugazi’s Joe Lally. Across the 5 tracks there are 5 basslines, most of which are up there with anything Peter Hook ever wrote, so it’s often a bit of a showcase for Frusciante’s excellent guitar work.

Joss Stone – Mind Body & Soul

While it’s this album that propelled Stone to the stardom that likely contributed to her very public breakdown, she was at that time rather sweet – she has been again for several years but she’s not the big star anymore. Mind Body & Soul (quick, call the comma police!) is far more pop than the purer soul of her debut but there are still plenty of soulful (in both senses of the word) moments to be had. It is perhaps a bit long and some songs are filler but the singles were great, Security was a lovely deeper cut, and the special edition featured a mind-blowing version of The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows. I think she has a great voice and doesn’t generally overdo the vocal show-offs.

Keane – Hopes and Fears

Not an obvious choice for me, but I think it’s a sublime pop record. At the time a big deal was made of the fact that they had a keyboard instead of a guitar but they got away with it, crafting infectious and gorgeously melancholy melodies time and again across an album of very little filler. I can’t help but like all the singles, and Your Eyes Open is another achingly beautiful cut.

Killswitch Engage – The End of Heartache

This isn’t the purists’ choice, but I for one very much enjoy the more emo and hook-laden metalcore stylings of the Howard Jones era albums (this was the first of three). People who know what they’re talking about often go with 2002’s Alive or Just Breathing. Much like with label-mates 36 Crazyfists, this was perhaps an attempt for a more crossover appeal. If nothing else it’s a great example that heavy music can be incredibly melodic, although it is maybe a bit sickly at times.

Lamb of God – Ashes in the Wake

This isn’t an album with a massive hook that makes me remember to revisit it time and again (few of Lamb of God’s are, except for a track like Embers with Deftones’ Chino Moreno on guest vocals) so much as a consistently high quality expression of the genre, in this case something like groove metal. I am currently uber-fanning Lamb of God a bit, buying their beer from Brewdog and reading frontman Randy Blythe’s memoir, but this record is home to much of their best work, regardless, leading right off with live set staple Laid to Rest.

Mastodon – Leviathan

Another obvious retrospective pick here, it being a bit raw and heavy for me at the time. But once you get on board with what Mastodon are trying to do it all falls into place. The riffs are absolutely gigantic (one might even say…mammoth), the solos are epic, the drumming is as octopus-like as Brann Dailor soon came to be known for, the time signatures are head-scratching and the song-writing is gloriously off-kilter.

Melvins – Pigs of the Roman Empire

While Kurt Cobain’s (and Adam Jones’ from Tool too I think) favourite band is one of the most prolific out there, of course not everything they produce is a gem. This one is though, fusing two of Melvins’ chief features – razor sharp basslines and ambient noise, the latter provided courtesy of Lustmord (who has also worked with Tool) particularly on the 22 minute plus title track. I really enjoy listening to this record while reading graphic novels, for some reason.

Omar A. Rodriguez-Lopez – A. Manual Dexterity

There was a time when Rodriguez-Lopez hadn’t released over 50 solo albums. The day before 31 August 2004, he hadn’t released any. There are better produced and more professional, and, frankly less avant-garde, albums in his oeuvre later on but this one holds a special place in my heart as where it all began. It starts ever so quietly then this lovely little guitar motif starts up and off the record goes. It’s a bit of a mishmash I guess, with a couple of vocal tracks (including one with Cedric Bixler-Zavala), guitar solos, free jazz saxophone, and typewriter key percussion. It is technically a soundtrack to something but I don’t think the film is available.

Saul Williams – Saul Williams

This is probably my favourite hip hop album of all time. It certainly has metal-head crossover appeal, both through its samples (e.g. Bad Brains) and collaborators Serj Tankian (System of a Down) and Zach de la Rocha (Rage Against the Machine). (Williams has elsewhere also collaborated with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.) The poetic lyrics are great too, which you’d think would be a baseline for rappers, but often isn’t (I don’t think he says his own name at any point, for example). I suppose he’s more political than, say, gangsta.

Slipknot – Vol.3: The Subliminal Verses

I keep banging on about how great this album is and how I think it’s far and away the masked Iowan nonet’s greatest achievement. It’s certainly the most adult, mature, and varied record, and I think it has dated far better than the more teenage appeal of the first two records (particularly Iowa, although People=Shit, album deep cut I am Hated, and the epic 15 minute dirge of the title track, are all still special to me). I’m not sure how to make sure I cover everything so I don’t have to keep banging on about it, but let’s try it track by track:

1. Prelude 3.0 – the best intro track they ever did (it’s almost a proper song, but not quite)
2. The Blister Exists – the perfect example of Slipknot as the devil’s marching band. That dual marching snares and kit trade-off that persists throughout the track and then ends it on its own is pure class
3. Three Nil – decent enough but nothing particularly special
4. Duality – quite possibly the best single they ever did
5. Opium of the People – unlike some of their later efforts, the chorus stays just the right side of saccharine
6. Circle – acoustic guitars! And some nice DJing
7. Welcome – as for Three Nil
8. Vermillion – one of the greatest tracks they ever did, from any angle (musical and lyrical)
9. Pulse of the Maggots – an epic pummel-er of a track with a heavy focus on rhythm. I love the air raid siren and spoken word at the start (the whole album features Corey Taylor’s best lyrics, I think. In a backlash to criticism he’d received for Iowa, there is no swearing on this record)
10. Before I Forget – yet another example of Slipknot’s ability to write a song with a fantastic chorus that is not sugary and out of place
11. Vermillion Pt.2 – a successful experiment with variations on a theme, this time featuring acoustic guitar, piano and cello
12. The Nameless – now I know what I said about the ‘Knot’s penchant for cringe-y choruses, and this is on paper the worst offender (it could almost be Backstreet Boys) but it’s the audacity and the contrast that makes it. And after a couple of acoustic-only backed renditions, the third chorus sours over the distortion
13. The Virus of Life – one of the worst songs they ever released. What became the obligatory late-album dirge hardly ever worked, and this one least of all. The only track on the album I can live without
14. Danger – Keep Away – a lovely little bookend of a song that ends the album calmly and perfectly

While there is plenty to like in the second half of Slipknot’s career, it is a shame they ditched so many of the elements that made this album so incredible - the arrangements, the more complex percussion, the flow through the record, the bookending, the lyrics that don’t rely on endless death metaphors (one of these days when I’ve got nothing else to do I’m going to count how many there are on 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind), hell, the use of acoustic instrumentation. I wonder if to a lot of people, and the band themselves, it just doesn’t sound like a Slipknot record.

A playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IyQ9nPWJjErFLC5twexT0?si=e6WydmMNQCutTUtIrAbSgw

1. 36 Crazyfists – At the End of August
2. 65daysofstatic – I Swallowed Hard, Like I Understood
3. Alexisonfire – No Transitory
4. Ataxia – The Sides
5. Biffy Clyro – Glitter and Trauma
6. Bjork – Who is it?
7. Converge – Last Light
8. Cult of Luna – Leave Me Here
9. edIT - Ants
10. Faithless – Mass Destruction
11. Head Automatica – Dance Party Plus
12. Incubus – Sick Sad Little World
13. Iron & Wine – Naked As We Came
14. Isis – Wills Dissolve
15. Jimmy Eat World – Pain
16. John Frusciante – Time Runs Out
17. John Frusciante – Time Goes Back
18. John Frusciante – A Corner
19. John Frusciante – 666
20. John Frusciante and Josh Klinghoffer – Communique
21. Joss Stone – Security
22. Keane – Your Eyes Open
23. Killswitch Engage – The End of Heartache
24. Kings of Leon – Day Old Blues
25. Lamb of God – Laid to Rest
26. Mastodon – Blood and Thunder
27. Melvins – The Bloated Pope
28. Morrissey – First of the Gang to Die
29. Norah Jones – Sunrise
30. Omar A. Rodriguez-Lopez – Around Knuckle White Tile [not on Spotify]
31. Razorlight – Somewhere Else
32. Reuben – Let’s Stop Hanging Out
33. Saul Williams – Telegram
34. Slipknot – Duality
35. Suns of the Tundra – Paper Wraps Stone
36. Tegan and Sara – Walking with a Ghost
37. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Unretrofied
38. The Prodigy – You’ll be Under my Wheels
39. The Used – Sound Effects and Overdramatics
40. U2 – Vertigo