Necromag.co.uk

Slipknot have divided and conquered for over a decade now, and each album they release has changed the way their fans and the world in general think about them. Their last album “Volume 3; The Subliminal Verses” saw them take the ultimate risk, abandon all that the legions of devoted fans had came to expect, and deliver something entirely different. Beautiful melody, acoustic guitar and brilliant song structures came across pure brutal riffage and thrash metal guitaring. And they definately are continuing along this path with album four. “All Hope Is Gone” is intended to rip your tits off whilst singing you a lullaby. Gematria (The Killing Name) is a 6 minute long thrash metal epic about the evils of America’s foreign policy, and by God Corey’s voice is better than ever. It’s a fantastic statement which carries into the sing-a-long hooks of “Sulphur” and the Megadeth-esque chug riffing of “Psychosocial.” Brilliant. “Dead Memories” is probably one of the catchiest Slipknot songs ever, while still maintaining that we are no longer listening to pissed off nu-metal teen angst kings, we are seeing the band as a whole now. Pure Metal through and through, Balls to Bones. To close the album, we have a soft/heavy brotherhood of “Snuff” and “All Hope Is Gone”. The former is something which not a lot of people would expect from Slipknot, one of the most beautiful songs I have heard in a long time. Its acoustic guitar meets keyboard and drums over a lovelorn Corey spilling his guts in an entirely different way than what he has put out before. And the latter is simply the heaviest thing I have heard all year, recalling “Pulse Of The Maggots” in its raw, metal attack. Once called by Kerrang! Magazine the most important band in the world, we can definately see why Slipknot are as big as they are today, they evolve to constantly be one step ahead of every band around. A very exciting record indeed.

[OX KING]