It’s odd that a band who, unconventionally, has nine members can be so formulaic. Slipknot is a huge gimmick and it is of no surprise that, given the American metal landscape that their gimmick was marketable, and has led the band to commercial success. They wear gruesome masks and write seriously heavy, angst-ridden music. Add in some rap and heavy distortion to make them appear hip and you’ve got a band that angry teenagers (usually for little reason), who know nothing about real music, will eat up. These same elements will also make them despised by most metal purists. I for one, tried my best to hate these guys when they first broke into the mainstream, but I could not ignore their heaviness, attitude and aggression which are elements that I enjoy in my metal so I decided to check them out. Sure, the anger is contrived and the lyrics are designed for disillusioned youth everywhere to identify with, but that marketing strategy is hardly new and neither is metal bands that use gimmicks to sell records, so I won’t hold this, their image and their commercial success against them. Rather, I will focus on their music, which really should be the ONLY reason some one does or does not like them.

I believe the old saying; “Too many cooks spoil the broth” is a good way to describe many of the songs on this album. Yes, they are extremely heavy and their sound is nice and thick, but having nine band members trying to contribute often results in a jumbled mess. Add heavy distortion and constant guitar feedback and often what you end up with is unlistenable noise that actually bothers your ears. Tattered and Torn is a great example of this. Distortion and screeching sound effects are an effective and easy way to create filler for an album and a cheap way to try and make an album sound angry. Marilyn Manson is often guilty of this, as he and Slipknot both go for the same pseudo-disturbing image and sound. I believe that both bands would do well to strip down their sound a bit and ease off the distortion.

Another element of this album that turns me off is the rap element which there is plenty of on this album. Whenever Corey Taylor begins to rap, virtually whatever potential the song once had goes out of the window and the song turns to crap. This happens on Only One, Spit it Out and No Life, and effectively ruins these songs. It’s a shame because I like some of what Slipknot offers on this album, such as the crunching heavy riffs, the drums (When the percussionists aren’t over doing it and using the lame “Tin drum sound” which Metallica would eventually copy) and the vocals (When Cory is barking and not rapping) as well as the anger and aggression (no matter how contrived it is, it still sounds convincing) However, on this album, the negatives far outweigh the positives.

Highlights of this album include the tracks Sic, Wait and Bleed and Surfacing. Sic is seriously heavy and pissed off and despite the presence of a turntable, still manages to be a good track. Wait and Bleed is commercial Slipknot so it is turned down a notch and has some actual singing on it, however, the song gets super heavy at the end and features a killer last riff. What separates Surfacing from other filler and wastes of time on this album is the killer chorus. It screams attitude. Every other song on the album is either average or crap. Unfortunately, the nihilistic theme of this album and the angst starts to wear thin after a while. It seems that somewhere, maybe half way through the album, that “I’m so pissed” seems to turn into “Why Me?” which makes the album seem to drag on and on effectively burying what interest I had left for the songs at the end of the album. Speaking of dragging on, the last track Scissors has a huge pause at the end of the song and then, around the 13:24 mark, there is some dialogue which is just plain stupid and I won’t even go into that. However, the track doesn’t end there, as there is one super fast and heavy song played which is better than half of the songs on this album. It’s a shame that they buried this song at the very end of the album and that you can’t just skip right to it. Instead, you have to manually fast foward if you don’t want to sit through silence and silly banter. Personally, I hate it when bands do this as it makes putting the CD on random a pain in the ass.

This album is only listenable to those who are fans of nu-metal as each song contains elements of the genre. However, although there are some things that I like about this album, in the end, there is also way too much that I don’t.