Review Summary: All hope is still gone
I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly whether or not I enjoy the new Slipknot album. On one hand, it’s a new slipknot album. The band already had 5 albums, with only All Hope is Gone being a true letdown. On the other hand, All Hope is Gone was one of the blandest albums I had heard in a long time, destroying any hope I wanted to have in the band to carry on.
The band touted this album as being a return to the sounds of Iowa and Vol. 3, though you can hardly tell they were reaching for Iowa. The songwriting here is the same boring mix that was found on All Hope is Gone, rendered even more banal and uninteresting simply because of the hype the band has put out. Save for Corey Taylor and a keg hit every so often you would never recognize this music as the same crazed band that put out Disasterpiece or Metabolic.
The album opens on a low note with an obvious attempt to mimic Prelude 3.0. XIX doesn’t carry the haunting qualities of the former and ends up falling flat on its face in its attempt at mood setting. Sarcastrophe attempts to kick things into high gear, but just ends up sounding tired and weak similar to Gematria from All Hope is Gone without the catchy guitar riffing. AOV follows, another faster paced song trying to harken to better years, and the biggest weakness of the album becomes apparent. The new drummer is horrible.
The man may be technically competent, but throughout the course of the album he plays most of the time in three different rhythms. The rolling double bass and one two kick/snare patterns dominate every aggressive track present, making everything feel the same by the halfway point. Oddly, The Devil in I turns, in context of the album, from a lackluster single, to a standout track simply because it doesn’t sound the same. Goodbye is similarly enjoyable, though plagued by the album’s second major fault, Corey Taylor.
Mostly gone are the days where Corey has sounded at home in the band that made him famous. His vocal work since Iowa has been weak if we’re being generous, and The Gray Chapter is no different. What makes this so confusing is his work on the last two Stone Sour albums where he nails both cleans and harshes with perfection. Here he sounds thin and powerless and tired, stuck reciting some of the weakest lyrics he’s ever written. In the past this was forgivable because of the sheer energy of the music, but here it helps to sabotage otherwise strong cuts like Skeptic or Lech.
The new drummer coupled with Corey’s continued decline as Slipknot front man lend the entire album a feeling of lifelessness, similar to the man it was dedicated to. With only 5 of the album’s 13 actual songs (Be Prepared for Hell being a throwaway interlude) coming in under four and a half minutes, the album drags on far longer than it should. By the time it reaches the end, attention has been lost to other, more interesting activities.
Not everything here is dismissible though. Killpop is a surprise smash and possibly the best song of the album. The melodies are genuinely reminiscent of the best moments from Vol. 3 and when the song becomes more aggressive it still chooses to err on the side of melody, never becoming recycled and overdone. Skeptic, The Negative One, and Custer are energetic and contain enough of the old Slipknot to become crowd favorites at live shows. Nomadic is the only aggressive track here that sounds like it could have fit smoothly between The Blister Exists and Welcome on Vol. 3, and while not the most memorable is fun enough to listen to.
The album closes with If Rain is What You Want, and thank god for that. Previous albums had Tattered and Torn, Scissors, Iowa, Virus of Life, Danger-Keep Away, and Gehenna, the songs that were creepy and slowed down to emphasize that the band wasn’t a one trick pony. This album touched on that with XIX, which was weak, and Goodbye, which lacked the creep factor, but nails that feeling with the closing track. It’s haunting and perfectly placed after the frantic The Negative One, closing the album on a dark, somber note.
Compared to All Hope is Gone there have been some improvements, but a muddy production and fixation on a four year dead band member and the theatrics that come with replacing him have superseded quality songwriting. There are hints scattered throughout the album that they may have another great album yet to be released, though six albums and 20 years in they may just want to throw in the towel if this is the best they can do.
