When Slipknot hit the public consciousness with their self-titled album in 1999, the impact was as huge as it was immediate. Nine men in masks, who huffed the fumes of dead crows in jars for giggles, playing a noise that sounded like the end of the world; it was the perfect calling card for a band who would come to define metal in the 2000s. Not every album they’ve made since has had as much impact, but they’ve remained an unwavering presence on the modern metal scene. In the aftermath of their surprise-released new song Arsenal, here are their seven studio albums (plus one album-ish) ranked in order of greatness.
8. Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. (1996)
It barely seems fair to include the first Slipknot album in this list – the band themselves effectively count it as a demo. It lacks Corey Taylor, Sid Wilson and Jim Root , instead showcasing a band very much in their infancy. Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. is only really worth revisiting as an exercise in researching their early days. Some songs, such as Only One and Tattered And Torn, went on to appear on their ‘proper’ self-titled 1999 debut. Hearing them in their embryonic form here is interesting, but there is very little in the way of evidence here that Slipknot would go on to become a band to define a generation. For completists only.
7. The End, So Far (2022)
The noise around Slipknot’s seventh studio album proper did not exactly bode well. Jim Root seemed to confirm rumours that the record’s studio sessions were chaotic, stating that the band were “flying by the seat of our pants”, while his guitar cohort Mick Thomson openly stated that “some people are gonna hate it”.
And so, when it landed, fans shouldn’t have been too surprised to find a record that felt disjointed if surprisingly freewheeling, the Radiohead-aping wooziness of Adderall and Alice In Chains-through-a-meatgrinder vibes of Acidic bumping up awkwardly against the more traditional but lacklustre fare of The Dying Song and The Chapeltown Rag. That said, there’s some fascinating experimentation going on here that bodes well for Slipknot’s future – a band this far into their career pulling out genuine surprises should always be cause for celebration.
6. All Hope Is Gone (2008)
It’s unfortunate that All Hope Is Gone is the final recorded document showcasing the “classic” Slipknot line-up when it’s such a deeply flawed record. Within two years of its release bassist Paul Gray had passed away, and three years later drummer Joey Jordison was unceremoniously ousted from the band.
But while those events were tragic and regrettable, it is clear that something needed to change in the Slipknot camp, as their fourth album does not hold up well to scrutiny. Songs like the messy title track and the forgettable Dead Memories bear little resemblance to the powerhouse that Slipknot previously were. Even the album’s one saving grace, the anthemic Psychosocial, is essentially an inferior retread of better songs from their previous albums.
5. .5: The Gray Chapter (2014)
Coming in the aftermath of the genuine trauma that the band experienced at the start of the 2010s, it’s an achievement that we got a fifth Slipknot album at all. So maybe we shouldn’t be too harsh on the fact that it’s certainly not one of their best.
.5: The Gray Chapter – dedicated to the late Paul Gray – is an uneven record. Understandably, there’s far more in the way of sombre material here – not always a bad thing, as in the case of powerfully moving opening track XIX – and when Slipknot do launch into the heavier likes of Custer and the menacing The Devil In I they sound great. The main problem is that, with 14 tracks and a running time of around an hour, it could have done with some editing to turn a flabby effort into a truly great record.
4. Vol.3: The Subliminal Verses (2004)
It’s not easy having to follow up two genuinely groundbreaking albums, but that’s the position that Slipknot found themselves in heading to the recording of their third effort. It’s by no means a failure of Vol.3 that it finds itself at this place in our countdown. This is a genuinely great collection of songs, and it’s the moment where Slipknot began to really branch out and become better songwriters.
For proof, there’s the inhumanly huge Duality, which might just be their definitive, festival-rousing song, but it’s also on tracks like Prelude 3.0 and Circle, which lean on the right side of melodic without losing any of the band’s famous intensity. If there is a criticism then it would be the fact that, once again, at just over an hour, it lags towards the end. That aside, Vol.3 still out-punches most metal bands’ best efforts.
3. We Are Not Your Kind (2019)
You’d be forgiven for believing that, for all their continued success and consistently great live shows, Slipknot were never going to scale the heights of their earliest material as their sixth album came over the horizon at the start of 2019. But they certainly silenced the doubters with We Are Not Your Kind.
This didn’t just feel like a return to form, but a brand new chapter and a pointer to what Slipknot could still achieve. Once the band released the album’s first single, Unsainted, it was clear that they had something special on their hands. The Slipknot of 2019 came with a greater grasp of melody than ever, with a wider pool of influences – see the gothic, industrial crawl of the excellent Spiders for evidence. Yet the fire that had been re-lit in their bellies fuelled crushing metal stompers such as Solway Firth with an intensity that hadn’t been there for years. A welcome return to their best.
2. Iowa (2001)
Comfortably the heaviest album that has ever topped the UK album chart, Iowa is a genuine one-off. Released in an era when it seemed the best way for a band to achieve commercial success in a nu metal-dominated world was to make themselves seem poppier, cuddlier, cartoonish and maybe chuck in an 80s cover or two, Slipknot became the ugliest band on the planet.
From the second the gruesome and tormented screams of (515) dovetail into People = Shit it’s obvious that there was to be no compromise. There is very little in the way of respite throughout the 66-minute runtime and the sole reason it isn’t topping this list is that the lack of different shades affect the album just a little.
But that’s nitpicking. Iowa is an astonishing piece of work: as bleak, seething, furious and hate-soaked as metal has ever sounded in the mainstream. It’s no coincidence that in the album’s aftermath there was a direct rise in the amount of extreme metal that began to flourish within the scene – something that’s hard to imagine happening without the blastbeats and death metal riffs of this record ushering it all in. If that alone is Iowa’s legacy then it’s a pretty awesome one.
1. Slipknot (1999)
Has there ever been a more perfect opening to any album in the history of metal as the five-song run that kicks off Slipknot’s self-titled Roadrunner Records debut? (Sic), Eyeless, Wait And Bleed, Surfacing and Spit It Out – If Slipknot’s career had ended right there then they would have done more than 90 per cent of other metal bands.
Despite protestations from a handful of nitpickers that it’s front-loaded to its detriment, the entirety of Slipknot is a hell of a ride. It starts with the most furious, white-knuckle pummelling imaginable before slowly descending, via the creeping and psychotically sick likes of Tattered And Torn and Prosthetics, to the eight-and-a-half-minute long nervous breakdown nightmare of Scissors that closes the record.
Slipknot would go on to change and mutate, variously upping the brutality, pushing their material to arena-level, writing skyscraper choruses and anthemic, generation-defining songs. But they would never again sound as unhinged, unpredictable and consistently effecting as they do here.
