Hello and welcome to a Slipknot Tuesday. It’s my 3rd annual Slipknot post, outside of reviewing or retro reviewing one of their albums. This post is simply to comment on how one of my favourite metal bands is doing from 366 days ago. The following are my own opinions and I don’t give a shit what anybody else thinks.
Since the last post they have continued touring .5: The Gray Chapter and things seem to be going alright. It is also the 6th anniversary of the death of basest Paul Gray and if you think about it, the band hasn’t been the same since.
When Paul died there was some talk about whether Slipknot was to continue and thankfully, they have. However 3 years later, drummer Joey Jordison was fired from the band, for the bands reasons. Corey has said that they going about it the right way, in order to be able to talk about why he was kicked out of the band he co-founded, along with Paul Gray and Shawn Crahan, better known as Clown. I think that they should try to patch things up and grow up and reunite. You can’t really replace Paul Gray but Joey Jordison brings his drumming style to the table and nobody else can coppy it and make it sound like Slipknot.
Now that I’ve mentioned Joey no longer being in the band, I have changed my review of .5: The Gray Chapter too. I gave it 10 out of 10 for being a Slipknot album and now, it has dropped significantly. It sounds like Slipknot only because Corey Taylor is still the vocalist but other than that, most of the album sounds nothing like what Slipknot should sound like. For example: the song Lech sounds less metal and more punk. The track Custer sounds way too much fun to be a Slipknot song and fun is not what Slipknot is about. It is about letting out all your anger and going nuts without any regard for yourself or other people. This goes for the band and the fans and I think that has been toned down somewhat, even if it is inadvertently so.
Something else I have been thinking about for a while is the trend towards songs which have acoustic guitars or conventional song structure to them. When Slipknot released their debut album in 1999, this was not what the band was about musically. I think that the influences that have come from outside projects other members have been involved with have confused the sound and some rather uninformed fans. For example: The Devil And I was thought to sound like Corey Taylor’s other band Stone Sour and both Corey and myself agree that it doesn’t at all and is purely a Slipknot song. The difference is that there is less double kick drum in the songs Corey writes for Stone Sour then what he writes with Slipknot. The other thing is that the song is in the key of a, which is not a typical key signature for any Stone Sour song. The exception to this is the song Red City from House Of Golden Bone PT 2 but that is rare. I hope that at some point, Slipknot decides to drop the acoustic guitars and just concentrate on playing heavy, thrashing, angry and violent music. This slow trippy stuff is fine but I would rather hear stuff like Sic or Eyeless then a song like Killpop or Snuff. Not that those songs are bad, they just don’t fit into how Slipknot started and how they should stay, in my opinion. I have all their albums and I know what I’m talking about.
As for the members, well, Corey Taylor has released another book and his other band Stone Sour are continuing to release the Burbank Trilogy., I’m sure everyone else in the band has other things on the side and can go back to them, when Slipknot goes on hiatus again. As for Joey Jordison, I really hope that he and the band try to patch things up and get back together. Then maybe, we can get back to the next Slipknot album sounding more like Slipknot, the whole way through. don’t get me wrong, I like Jay Weinberg as a drummer but he is not Joey. There is a certain feel that Joey has when he is playing and it makes Slipknot sound like they have, before .5: The Gray Chapter. Jay is close and The Negative One is a great song but I would like to hear Joey playing the same beats and fills. I think he would make the song sound even more like what Slipknot should sound like and that’s that. As for Joey, I think he also has to be less of a creative force and allow more of the other people room to have their say on future material. Maybe they have but I hear too much Joey on a song like Dead Memories. It reminds me of a song like Tired And Lonely, which appeared on the Road Runner United compilation back in 2005. If you have bothe the compilation and All Hope Is Gone, just take a listen and you will understand what I’m talking about. However, I also think that Joey is a great song writer and has given us great songs like the aforementioned Dead Memories and others, which he had a hand in writing on the first 4 albums.
Well, that’s about it for this years Slipknot post, unless a new album comes out. I have heard that it may be a concept album and that is a bit worrisome because that may take Slipknot into a less metal direction and into a more arch rock for progressive rock direction. Again, not that it’s bad… It’s just not what I would like them to do. I’ve said what I would like them to do above and if they have other ideas, I’ll follow but I may not necessarily like them screwing around with their sound. Obviously it’s good to develop and expand but please don’t forget where you came from. Slipknot are a metal band, with other elements which make up the sound. They have had 3 albums under their belt, in which they have expanded on their original sound and it is time for them to go back and kick ass, on record as well as live. The only thing I hope they will do that is in any way a nodd to pop culture is to appear on The Simpsoons. for Bart. Hay, Lady GaGa did for Lisa, so why not Slipknot for the character who loves to be a pain in the ass to people who are in a position of power.
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