Album review: Slipknot – All Hope Is Gone

Looked down upon, ridiculed, not taken seriously, called a gimmick, as well as rumours of inter band tensions, successful side projects, countless injuries, personal demons and many strong personalities all wanting to break out.

All these factors would have broken a lesser band but Slipknot have survived and returned with their fourth album, All Hope Is Gone.

The intro, similar to the last three albums, is an intimidating arrangement of noise, feedback and vocals, with Corey Taylor proclaiming “All Hope Is Gone” before the band launch into Gematria (The Killing Name), one of the most blistering songs they have ever recorded. When the next track, Sulfur, arrives you begin to notice something different, something the previous album (Vol 3) touched upon — Taylor’s voice.</>

Those who have listened to his other band, Stone Sour, will know just how good it is.

To hear it used on a Slipknot album is…well, depends on the listener. Some will hate, some will be indifferent, I see it as progression. It’s also shown in Psychosocial, which has the potential to become Slipknot’s anthem, with driving beats, a guitar solo (a rarity in a Slipknot song) and a mix of Taylor’s vocal ranges.

Dead Memories and Vendetta show off this new approach, before returning to the ‘old’ Slipknot with Butcher’s Hook. Famed for making unnerving music, the first time you hear this well-known trait is on Gehenna, laid over a swirling sample with haunting guitars and jumping between quiet and loud, proving the band still have the ability to make you sit on the edge of your seat.

This Cold Black, with the yelled words of “Welcome home” is business as usual and Wherein Lies Continue starts in the same vein as Gehenna, but again shows Taylor’s talents as a vocalist.

Snuff is only the third song by Slipknot to feature an acoustic-sounding guitar, but works to great effect, and the album concludes with the short but visceral title track (unless you have the special edition, worth getting alone for the remix of Vermillion Pt 2).

There are not many bands which play with the same passion and intensity as Slipknot. Any of the weaker songs from this album would be welcome additions to most band’s records as a choice track.

One thing which is clear throughout All Hope Is Gone though is how mature the band now sounds. Their debut was an array of different instruments and sounds, and as the albums have been completed and the years have passed, the style has been honed and toned into a driving, pulsating monster and has culminated in this, not their best album, but their most important.

They rode the nu-metal wave and survived. And this album is going to ensure Slipknot are around, masked or not, for a few years to come. Providing they don’t kill each other first, that is.