PODCAST: Glacially Musical Pouredcast 105: Slipknot Discography: Pt. 2 “Iowa” – If You’re 555 I’m 666


 

Arguably the biggest metal band in the world, Slipknot is the subject of our current series. Episode 2 of 4 picks up the band following the release of their game-changing debut, from Ozzfest side-stage opener to headlining over legends in just a year, followed by the release of their second album, Iowa (Roadrunner Records).

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Watch Sepultura’s Eloy Casagrande Cover Slipknot’s “People = Shit”



Sepultura drummer and world-class talent Eloy Casagrande has shared a vide of him covering Slipknot classic “People = Shit’, from the 2001 album Iowa. Watch the video below. Eloy commented: “No audio editing, no samples, no triggers. Audio recorded with the EAD10 plugged straight to my phone (using the device’s camera to record the video). This album was recorded without a click track, which means that the tempo is volatile.”Continue reading


Cloudburst – Cloudburst


One of the most appealing aspects of getting to listen to Cloudburst’s self-titled sophomore (Samstrong Records) effort is learning that they hail from Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Through years of tape trading, international touring and eventually communicating online we’ve always known that the extreme music market is indeed a global one, but it’s always exciting to receive these imports.Continue reading


Slipknot – All Out Life


Easily one of the most anticipated albums of 2019, the new Slipknot album is sure to be picked over and examined by fans and the entirety of the music press. The album will be the follow up to 2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter (Roadrunner) and their sixth overall. The band is in the top echelon in the world for heavy music, and even kvlt and underground bands that feel unaffected by the heaviest commercial band out there, are indeed impacted by a Slipknot release. In short, this band is good for metal. The kid that discovers Slipknot today, may find Carcass, or Imperial Triumphant, or Bell Witch tomorrow. Anyway, the band dropped a b-bomb on Halloween when ‘All Out Life’ (Roadrunner) was surprised released.Continue reading


Slipknot – Day Of The Gusano (DVD)


It seems most bizarre to think that a beast as all-conquering of the metal world as Slipknot had yet to take their larger-than-life stage show into Mexico City at any point in their twenty-year existence. Yet, until December 2015, and the .5 – The Grey Chapter’s incarnation of Knotfest, that particular duck had yet to broken. Continue reading


Metallica Announces A Benefit Show For The Native Fund


Metallica has just added another date to their upcoming North American tour. Continue reading


Video: Slipknot Performs Iowa At Knotfest


slipknot-iowa-knotfest

Ozzfest Meets Knotfest took place this past weekend at San Manuel Amphitheater and Festival Grounds in San Bernardino, California, and just as Black Sabbath did on Friday night, Slipknot headlined Saturday night with a historic performance. Continue reading


Slipknot To Perform Entire Iowa Album At Ozzfest Meets Knotfest


Slipknot, by Evil Robb Photography

Slipknot, by Evil Robb Photography

Slipknot has announced their will perform their 2001 seminal modern metal album Iowa (Roadrunner) at Ozzfest Meets Knotfest this September. The band has never performed the album in full before. Ozzfest Meets Knotfest festival takes place on September 24th (Ozzfest) and 25th (Knotfest) at San Manuel Amphitheater and Festival Grounds in San Bernardino, California. You can get tickets here:

The band has commented on their pending performance of Iowa:

“Fifteen years ago, something quite extraordinary happened. Nine men from Iowa went in to a studio in California and created one of the most chaotic and destructive albums ever made. It was, and still is, a shockingly physical and ferocious recording.

To this day, it has never been performed in its entirety.

That is about to change.

“On Sept 25, 2016, at Knotfest in San Bernardino, 30,000 people will experience an event that has NEVER been done before. It will be a dense and serious spectacle, both visually and sonically.

“But you’ll be able to say ‘you were there.”

“So… Will you be there?”

“Iowa” went on to become a huge international success, spawning hits including “Disasterpiece”, “The Heretic Anthem”, “People = Shit” and “Left Behind”.

The San Manuel Amphitheater and Festival Grounds is where Ozzfest began in 1996 and where Knotfest was staged last year.

ozzfest knotfest 2016 ghostcultmag

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Slipknot – .5: The Gray Chapter


Slipknot-5-Gray-Chapter

.5: The Gray Chapter (Roadrunner) is an album of some significance.

Not just because this will be the most high-profile heavy release of the year (probably by some distance) from the biggest current relevant band in metal; not just because six years and two months have passed since their last, the under-rated but far from classic All Hope Is Gone; but because this album will have to answer the burning questions over whether Slipknot, this generations’ standard-bearers and the largest and most impactful metal band since Metallica, can still raise the flag and deliver following everything they have had to endure in the intervening period.

So, is The Gray Chapter good enough?

The answer to that, and the questions above, is emphatic. The Gray Chapter is a statement of intent, a mountain-strong collection of hate-anthems to stand with Slipknot’s best.

All Killer, No Filler, And then some. .5 punches hard, deep and long, undeniably their most consistent album since 2001’s Iowa, with ten of the twelve full songs clear and valid options to be elevated to a set list already packed full of classics.

The Gray Chapter explodes to life as the venomous ‘Sarcastrophe’ launches with a roar over a trademark downtuned ‘knot riff, like a rattling rollercoaster with drums and taut percussion slamming under DJ Sid Wilson’s scratching, sirens and whirls as a stomping anthem of violence is spat out. ‘AOV’ follows in the same vein; a spiteful, claustrophobic pounding that opens out into clever hook of a chorus, with impassioned delivery from ringmaster Corey Taylor. Next, the excellent melodic insurrection of ‘The Devil In I’ raises the level of the impressive start to the album, a track to rival a ‘Duality’ or a ‘Left Behind’.

And then there is ‘Killpop’, a milestone track; beautiful, dark, venerable and vulnerable, a song of gravitas and reflection that continues down the left hand path of ‘Vermillion’ and ‘Snuff’, that reminds that, amongst the clatter, this is a band with genuine depth behind it.

Having visited anger and reflection, it seems the band finally reaches acceptance at the midpoint with the songs most clearly about the tragically departed Paul Gray, the melancholy ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Skeptic’, a catchy uptempo riot with Taylor hollering “The world will never see another crazy motherfucker like you, The world will never know another man as amazing as you”. That expressed, it’s like a weight off the mind of the album and things tear off, starting with ‘Nomadic’ and its classic grind-and-click-into-huge-chorus Slipknot.

Reaching the conclusion of their fifth opus the band hit the “moving on” part of the Kübler-Ross curve, delivering two immense slabs of Class A Slipknot. ‘Custer’, with its “Cut cut cut me up, fuck fuck fuck me up!” refrain deals out a pounding that is half Slipknot, half Subliminal Verses, Shawn Crahan showing how important his percussion is to the overall sound by tying their new (as yet unveiled) drummer to the Slipknot groove. Meanwhile there are further daemons shown to be exorcized in ‘The Negative One’, a song that despite protestations has to be about Joey Jordison, and it stomps out a syncopated battery and buzzing migraine of a low-slung riff, before ‘If Rain Is What You Want’, a sombre and pained conclusion.

The Slipknot sound has long been established, their influence is inherent, but what .5: The Gray Chapter achieves is unity – a pulling together of all the relevant bits of Slipknot. It may not have the vitriol and face-ripping point-proving of Iowa but it does amalgamate everything else that is Slipknot into one tribute to their past, and to those that passed. If there is a criticism it is that development seems to have ceased, as this is an collating and re-presenting of their previous endeavours, but the ‘knot still completely and absolutely pwn metal’s mainstream.

Nine may have become seven, but if you’re five five five, then they’re (still) six six six.

As I said before, .5: The Gray Chapter is an album of some significance.

9.0/10

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STEVE TOVEY