Slipknot - All Hope Is Gone

What better way to test out my new eleven speaker, pro-logic surround sound car stereo, than with the fourth studio album from Iowa’s finest, Slipknot. ‘All Hope Is Gone’ certainly makes for a suitable lyrical template for Slipknot and it proves that they themselves, have plenty of hope musically speaking.

The first thing that my new stereo emphasised to dramatic effect, is the crystal sonic splendour achieved by Slipknot’s acute technical excellence, captured perfectly by producer Dave Fortman and in Colin Richardson’s final mix.

Overview!

This album is brutal and will leave the uninitiated utterly perplexed by press murmurings that Slipknot have gone softer. Well there are a couple of ‘softer’ songs and there are some welcome splashes of harmony but tracks like Gematria, This Cold Black, Wherein Lies Continue, the already heralded Psychosocial and the excellent Vendetta prove what masters of rhythmic power metal Slipknot really are. They are their own genre, somewhere perfectly balanced between Machine Head and Metallica.

Mick Thomson and Jim Root’s guitars are menacing and exact, Corey Taylor’s vocals continue to impress and of course Joey Jordison’s percussive genius is the absolute centrepiece of this brilliance.

The only downer is that there are some fillers (to my ears at least) and the need to fill 70 minutes of a CD is as always, to blame for this.

Conclusion

In an ideal world, you have to listen to Slipknot through audio tools that will do it justice. I played some of it to someone who has no interest in ‘metal’ whatsoever, but the sheer sonic brutality of this album made him smile.