This spring, we learned that Slipknot are stepping into their future by taking stock of their past. That's because the iconic nu-metal nine-piece recently unveiled new masks and a new drummer, while simultaneously celebrating the awesomeness of their perma-punishing 1999 self-titled album.
The band have just announced a full-scale tour to celebrate 25 years of Slipknot, an incendiary assault of extreme-metal riffs, literally metallic keg drum sections, rap-rock record scratching and the grandscale unveiling of vocal phenom Corey Taylor.
From "sic" to "Eeyore," it's a front-to-back classic, but what's the single greatest cut on the album? We asked the 'Knot's diehards, a.k.a. Maggots, to pick — check out the top-five vote-getters below.
5. "Diluted"
Despite its title, "Diluted" is a potent nu-metal assault. The queasy, inverted bends and back-snapping beat of the intro set the stage for a truly apocalyptic doom-burst. Positively festering with abscess-inky lyrical loathing and pushed-to-the-brink destructiveness, "Diluted" is one of Slipknot's most confrontational and ugly standouts.
Props to the fans for backing this savage deep cut over "hits" like "Wait and Bleed" or "Spit It Out."
4. "Surfacing"
When Corey Taylor growled, "I am the push that makes you move," on "Surfacing," he pretty much locked Slipknot's into a mission statement thenceforward: Let's get super aggressive, so everyone else goes completely crazy.
And sure enough, "Surfacing" is one of the self-titled album's most frantic pieces, colliding an oddly singing-saw-like metal riff with vinyl-splintering turntablism and Joey Jordinson's positively thunderous double-kick work.
Add to this the must-roar-along "fuck it all!" chorus and you have an eternal Maggot anthem.
3. "Purity"
There's a near-suffocating, overbearing dread pervading mid-album deep cut "Purity," which — due to its absence from the widely distributed 1999 reissue of Slipknot — has earned the mystique of being the quasi-"lost" Slipknot cut.
Sonically, the song gets quite spacious — its verses juxtapose octopodal drumming with ultra-lean bass ambiance — but Taylor's claustrophobic, girl-in-a-box reporting style lands like a veritable iron-cast kennel door swinging shut for the final time. That meek, quivered "bleak all around me" makes for an all-timer understatement on this slow-boiling creeper.
2. "(sic)"
While preceded by the quick blip of white noise that was "742617000027," "(sic)" is the proper introduction to Slipknot's mania.
It's all there in the album's second track: the detuned 7-string fracas, oil drum-rattling percussion circles straight out of Mad Max, berserker-barked vocals. Just as quickly as listeners were faced with the beguiling, quasi-anonymous presentation of the Iowa Nine, the 'Knot revealed exactly what they were dealing with: a force to be fucking reckoned with.
Sick, indeed.
1. "Eyeless"
Revolver readers agree: You can't see California without Marlon Brando's eyes.
"Eyeless"' madman refrain goes far in summarizing the chaos on display in Slipknot's second proper song. It's a truly maniacal onslaught, between those hypnotically manic breakbeats, the shattered-glass panic chord dissonance, and one of Taylor's most unhinged, and outright tremorous early vocal performances.
Threats fly freely. The beats hit big. It's the best of the best on the 'Knot's self-titled opus, according to the voting public.
