Album Review: We Are Not Your Kind by Slipknot

The 'Knot's sixth album is an astonishing record: a roaring, horrifying delve into the guts of the band's revulsion, a primal scream of endlessly inventive extreme metal and searing misanthropy You look at that 1999 image of Slipknot, boiler-suited, clad in cheap, nasty horror movie masks, crowded together in a playground, the bleached-out bright weather eerily at odds with their back alley menace, and it's hard not to be moved by the distance they've travelled. A bunch of hicks from Iowa, social misfits who only made sense to themselves once they adopted monikers and numbers, made some of the most uncompromising music imaginable and became one of the biggest bands in the world. It's so unlikely, and so brilliant.

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An album the Maggots deserve. Slipknot has had a lot to contend with in 2019, having lost yet another one of its original members due to internal dramas. With that, when you sit back and analyse the places this band has gone to in the last 10 years, it's amazing to think We Are Not Your Kind even exists. I mean, arguably, this band ran out of steam as far back as All Hope is Gone - an unfocused, bland and, at times, muddled record that saw fame and fortune getting the better of this nonet.

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The masked Iowans sixth full-length effort, We Are Not Your Kind, sees a confidant and apoplectic Slipknot in full command of their craft, delivering a searing 14-track set that's as versatile as it is observant of nu-metal's architectural truisms. Far removed from the desultory aggro-metal being dished out by veteran contemporaries like Saliva and Limp Bizkit, We Are Not Your Kind bristles with both intent and imagination. Corey Taylor and company have weathered their fair share of personal and professional woes over the years -- overdose, divorce, lineup changes, and lawsuits, not to mention an increasingly mercurial musical landscape -- but they have consistently managed to turn misfortune into grist for the sonic mill.

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If you look back at the history of Slipknot, the band have done an amazing job of creating a cohesive sound while tapping into so many different styles. From their first demo through their first three albums, the band kept pushing the boundaries of who they were, but after Vol. 3, their sound was locked in.   For a lot of bands, that's a good thing, but with Slipknot, the experimentation is what makes them interesting and their last two albums were very by-the-numbers. They weren't bad, just a tad formulaic, but luckily, We Are Not Your ….

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The Lowdown: When it comes to a long career in any art form, growth is a necessity. Back in 2004, Slipknot released Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), a turning point in their career that steered away from the abrasive sound of their previous records. Since Vol. 3, the band has incorporated a mix of ….

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S lipknot are never too far from trauma. Having long outlived the terrors of nu-metal, the Iowan masked behemoths' last album, .5: The Gray Chapter, channelled their grief at founding bassist Paul Gray's fatal overdose. This sixth album's similarly tortuous gestation included frontman/best-selling author Corey Taylor's marriage break-up and a bizarre incident where guitarist Mick Thomson was stabbed in the head by his brother.

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