Slipknot (Metal)

Overwrought, unsettling and apocalyptic, Slipknot's third album is a tour de force of the last circle of hell, and it looks suspiciously like the Hawkeye State, the place that disgorged these bitter masked men. But the bitterness of these Children of the Corn is high art, as they reconstruct some of the disturbing landmarks that made them who they are with a nefarious guitar crunch and a relentless bass menace. Self-castigating and anxious, Corey Taylor both fascinates and repels as he rips vocals out of his larynx until his throat bleeds, setting a new high and low for metal in this millennium.

Iowa is not just the first great record of the nu-metal era - it's better than that. In fact,
Slipknot's second album may be the only platter of its day and subgenre that, in five or ten
years, we call "classic," with the same awed breath we reserve for Black Sabbath's early
monsters, Metallica's Master of Puppets and Rage Against the Machine. Next to Iowa's
hell-hop polydrumming and nail-bomb showers of soprano-drone guitar and sam... More >