A Few Words About Slipknot (Or, How I Grew Up With Nü-metal And Learned That Some Of It Is Worth Defending) Steve Lampiris Follow Dec 6, 2018 · 7 min read

When nü-metal was at its peak in popularity, I was in middle school. I was the perfect age for its marketing: mad-at-society male aggro vocals over simple, chugging riffs. Fuck yeah. While it does deserve the criticism it’s received, there are some albums that are unfairly maligned just because they were (seen as) a part of the movement. I’ve defended both Limp Bizkit and The Union Underground in the past on those grounds. Well, kinda sorta defended.

Like any fashion trend, nü-metal came and went. Now, it seems, those that grew up in that era are rethinking its music. I am among them. To that end, I decided to return to an album that was important in my discovery of metal, one that I’m sure many have experienced as a gateway to becoming a metalhead.

It’s Slipknot’s self-titled effort from 1999. It’s a nü-metal record, yes, but it’s heavier than the genre’s biggest names. It’s louder, more intense, and just a bit deranged. It’s not perfect, but it is a landmark in heavy metal as a whole.

Here’s why.

Among the many statements made about Chester Bennington after his death, being the voice of angry suburban kids was one of the most popular takes. Hilary Saunders declared:

In the late ’90s and early 2000s, anger was still the prevailing emotion in popular music, and Bennington gave kids of the era (especially those living in suburbs and rural areas) a place to channel that rage and a justification for feeling it in the first place.

Similarly, Jeremy Larson described the band’s mega-selling debut as “the sound of rural adolescence and hating everything about it,” and that Bennington’s “impact on a generation cannot be overstated.”

Eric Sundermann, who’s from western Iowa, went one step further. He called Linkin Park “one of our generation’s most influential bands,” and as a result “shaped me & every kid in middle america who was ever angry about open spaces.”

Around that same time — that is, the rise of nü-metal at the turn of the century — there was another band whose singer wrote about anger and frustration of growing up in middle America. They don’t have any diamond certifications, but they are from Iowa.

The band in question is the nine-headed rage monster known as Slipknot, a thrashing percussive tempest with which vocalist Corey Taylor used his blood vessel-bursting scream to vent his seething fucking hatred of, well, everything. Indeed, “Surfacing” with its teenage shitfit of a chorus provides a makeshift thesis for the band:

Fuck it all! Fuck this world! Fuck everything that you stand for!

Don’t belong! Don’t exist! Don’t give a shit! Don’t ever judge me!

But Slipknot didn’t start out that way. The band was formed in Des Moines in 1995 by its core rhythm section of drummer Joey Jordison, percussionist Shawn Crahan, and bassist Paul Gray. Apart from that trio, Slipknot’s membership was aqueous for the next few years, and included the additions of keyboardist/sampler Craig Jones and guitarist Mick Thomson. And while Jones and Thomson were credited on the band’s first release, 1996’s Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat., the record’s lineup — Jordison, Crahan, and Gray plus vocalist/percussionist Anders Colsefni and guitarists Donnie Steele and Josh Brainard — wouldn’t last.

Neither would the band’s sound. Beyond its significance and/or worth for die-hard completists, the stapled-together experimentalism of M.F.K.R. is only meaningful as a curio for most fans. Interestingly, though, three of the record’s songs — “Only One,” “Tattered & Torn,” and “Gently” — would appear in altered (read: improved) versions on later albums, the former two on their self-titled LP and the latter on its follow up, 2001’s Iowa.

When M.F.K.R. stalled beyond some local airplay, the band decided to write new material with an increased focus on melody, particularly on vocals. Enter Corey Taylor, vocalist for (another) Des Moines band called Stone Sour. With Taylor on vocals and Colsefni on percussion, this new iteration of Slipknot recorded a demo in early 1998 and shopped it around while the band’s lineup continued to shapeshift. Among those interested was the godfather of nü-metal, producer Ross Robinson, who offered to produce the band’s debut album after seeing them rehearse.

Slipknot signed to Roadrunner, and entered the studio to record their eponymous, major label debut. By late ’98, it was essentially done; impressively, all the layered percussion was recorded in just three days. As 1998 gave way to 1999, the band’s lineup changed again, this time resulting in the addition of Stone Sour guitarist Jim Root. Slipknot mk. II returned to the studio for further recording, and emerged with a finished product in February 1999.

The production of Slipknot is noticeably brittle and raw, perhaps, at least in part, the result of a decision by Robinson and Jordison to master the record on analog. The (almost-) live sound of the album adds to the visceral nature of the proceedings. Songs are built using percussion as the base, with chainsaw guitars and eerie, terrifying samples and sound effects piled on top until it becomes one giant, meat grinder-esque din. Songs like “(sic),” “Surfacing,” and “Liberate” have memorable riffs, sure, but unlike most (mainstream) metal, the point here is to create a tumultuous racket that somehow still manages to be both appealing and cathartic to a mass audience — that is, baggy clothing-wearing teenagers whose feelings are more intensely lizard-brained than crawling in their own skin.

You can probably thank Robinson for that part. As a producer, he smoothed out the edges of the band’s compositional style and pushed them towards writing actual songs with melodies and hooks. To wit, the soaring chorus of “Wait and Bleed” and the surprisingly catchy bridge of “Purity” could’ve been parts of major late ’90s rock hits had they been written by anyone else. Robinson also reined in Slipknot’s penchant for experimentation. The new version of “Tattered & Torn,” while the closest to the original of the M.F.K.R. remodels, illustrates Taylor’s importance (and what makes Slipknot stand out beyond their slightly-more-extreme brand of nü-metal). Both feature a nauseous lurch with ominous effects swirling around like bats, yet the essential difference is Taylor’s performance and lyrics, both of which replace Colsefni’s inferior originals. Throughout M.F.K.R., Colsefni employs a pretty standard death metal growl, including on “Tattered,” which finds him barking second-rate macabre images like:

I drink my own cells

A decomposing well

Roaches in my head

I become the living dead.

Compare that to Taylor’s edge-of-a-breakdown vocals and phrasing:

The nerves you sever

Can serve you better

In the blink of an eye

In the space of a second

Open my wrists

Give me my lessons.

This shouldn’t be surprising, as Taylor’s larynx-destroying paranoia can make the phone book compelling. Granted, full-bore screaming is an effective, if cheap, way to get attention, but Taylor’s ability to capture a man crumbling in real time is what sells it all. Witness the bridge of “Liberate” where his sanity tumbles uncontrollably down a flight of stairs right along with the quasi-nonsense spilling out of him:

“Hard eyes glow right in my darkness again

With the sickness, renegade sisters, blisters

Salivate, litigate, liberate, madness, sadness

Fuck this, how long have I had this?

I don’t need this, out of my business

Insert, engage, betrayed, my God!

Loss of control is a major theme of Slipknot, as if there’s an internal malevolence that’s causing him such suffering. On “Prosthetics” Taylor interprets a character from the 1965 film The Collector: “Even if you run, I will find you/ I decided I want you, now I know I need”, he states in a haunting matter-of-factness. Then his anger explodes: “You will be mine!/ Fucking you will be mine!”

Later in the bridge, he portrays the character’s struggle with reason: “What the fuck is different, man?/ I can’t believe I’m doing this”. It’s an Oscar-worthy performance in five minutes. Similarly, on “Wait and Bleed” Taylor tells the story of a man who keeps dreaming that he’s slashed his wrists in a bathtub before waking up to the realization that he’s actually gone through with it: “I’m a victim — Manchurian candidate/ I have sinned by just making my mind up/ And taking your breath away”.

But perhaps Taylor’s most notable performance is on the final song (minus the secret track following a long silence, because 1999). An eight-minute metallic crawl about self-harm, both literal and figurative, “Scissors” is an exercise in the push-pull of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde vocal gymnastics. Taylor alternates between frail and jittery talk-singing and unbridled mania, making cold observations about his existence:

It’s hard to stay between the lines of skin

Just ’cause I have nerves don’t mean that I can feel

I wasn’t very much fun to be with, anyway

Just let the blood run red ’cause I can’t feel!

Later, Taylor screams, “Biding my time until the time is right” as if he’s trying to outdo every other scream that came before it. The song climaxes when Taylor lets it all out, potentially to the point of tears, where he seemingly turns his fury inward: “You burn!/ You purge!/ I don’t need you anymore!/ I don’t need you!” It’s distressing and difficult to stomach, but goddamn if it isn’t infinitely captivating.

And ultimately, that’s what this is. Even with the multiple ill-advised attempts at rapping and embarrassing teenage posturing (ahem, “Big mouth fucker/ Stupid cocksucker/ Are you scared of me now?/ Then you’re dumber than I thought”), Slipknot still manages to be an honest and essential document of when enmity ruled guitar-based music and created a world through which suburban adolescents vicariously screamed. The first thing you hear when you press play is a sample from a Charles Manson documentary where Corey Hurst describes Manson’s cult thusly:

They think it’s right to murder. They want to murder. Look at all the people– And they get a kick out of it, a sexual kick out of it. The whole thing, I think it’s sick.

Those final seven words are looped, wherein it’s sped up, slowed down, and generally fucked with, under jagged-edge electronics in order to establish a feeling of supreme apprehension from the outset. Then, without warning the morse code rage kicks in. In other words, it’s the sound of teenage anger without a proper means to express or control it right before it explodes.