Slipknot Music Review Editorial - Spinout

Something's rotten in the state of Iowa when the nu-metal nine-piece Slipknot becomes its proudest export. The band drinks piss, hurls shit, and sports neo-Nazi-style jumpsuits and macabre gimp masks while extolling mass loathing in ear-splitting volumes. But there's no need to get all Jesse Helms: You needn't grow up in a little house on the prairie to realize spewing sociopathic epithets is all the rage all over the world. The venom oozes particularly rampant among the nu-fangled "S" bands, such as Sevendust, Soulfly, Spineshank, Static-X and System of a Down.

But no other "S" band-save for the grunge-ier Staind-has met with the type of anticipation generated by Slipknot's Iowa. And with perennial malfeasant Eminem and Ozzfest adversary Marilyn Manson corroding conformity with more media censure, it's time for Slipknot to strike back.

From the outset of Iowa, Slipknot's follow-up to its 1999 platinum-plus self-titled album, it's clear the group didn't enroll in any anger management classes during its downtime. It's the furthest thing from singing and closest to the sound a simian would make while exfoliating with a blowtorch. In rare instances, the talented Mr. 8 stifles his depleted vitriol and finds a modicum of beauty, angelically harmonizing during "My Plague" and warmly offering "I close my eyes" before his beastly split personality finishes his thought, "I feel like I'm slipping away," during Iowa's standout track, "Lust Disease."

More often than not, however, Iowa is a torridly dull and abysmally bloated album. Though Slipknot features nine members-including three percussionists, two guitarists, a DJ and sampler, all with aliases that number 0 to 8-oftentimes you wish there were 10, and it'd be the sole job of Number 9 to make sure four bandmates' instruments were unplugged at all times. Sure, Slipknot, too, was nine strong, but somewhere between millenniums , the group became less concerned with immersed melodies, locomotive riffs and breakneck speed and more with sheer volume. It's as if Number 2 is playing song #5, while Number 4 is plays song #8, and so on, with each instrumentalist squaring off against another and Taylor fighting like hell to keep his tantrums above the cacophony.

But when he's heard-sometimes sounding like Jonathan Davis, other times Trent Reznor and usually the devil incarnate-his platitudes are replete with brutality ("You fucking touch me/I'm gonna rip you apart"), nihilism ("I'm not supposed to be here/I'm not supposed to be") and general misery ("I wanna leave without a trace/'Cause I don't wanna die in this place.") Exactly what he's bitching about is unclear and because Slipknot didn't feel up to supplying its lyrics to media outlets in advance, just know Slipknot's happiest when it's not. Other than the sprawling, semi-engaging opus "Iowa", which clocks in at over 15 minutes, Slipknot hasn't found any way to be heard other than loudly.

We've heard the "less is more" maxim haphazardly applied to so many ideals that it's become something of a clichf. In the case of The Who double-disc Live at Leeds, it's spot on. What was once considered the greatest classic rock live album of all time, with its raw, gritty sound, has been beefed up with the inclusion of the "Tommy" portion of the February 1970 concert at Leeds University. While many will appreciate the whole concert and The Who's faithful rendering of the famous rock opera, those that considered it overwrought from the beginning can always ignore the second disc and concentrate of the magic of radio staples such as "I Can't Explain" and "My Generation."