If you could set a band’s progress to music, it would sound a lot like Slipknot’s latest hatefest, All Hope Is Gone. The band is still fuelled by anger but this time it’s a distilled, refined and well-aged anger that leaves the brutality intact but takes the musicianship a notch higher. Minutes into the album, the whispered noisescape of ”˜Execute’ explodes into the teeth-rattling ”˜Gematria,’ a raging diatribe against America, by which time Slipknot fans are happily settling into familiar territory. But not for long. Assuredly their most experimental album yet, it shifts restlessly between monster riffing and relentless percussion on songs like ”˜Butcher’s Hook’ and ”˜This Cold Black’ to a flirtation with melodies on ”˜Sulfur’ and ”˜Psychosocial’ and the biggest surprise on the album, ”˜Snuff’, an acoustically driven power ballad, more a love song, that’s sure to have older Slipknot shifting uncomfortably in their seats. ”˜Dead Memories’ and ”˜Psychosocial’ take their places as the sing-along-chant-along anthems of the record, while the atonal ”˜Gehenna’ melds sludge with gooseflesh-raising vocals, a sort-of halfway point in the wildly oscillating musical styles on the rest of the album. The strategic positioning of the album is evident; Slipknot is moving towards a more radio-friendly sound, gathering a lot of new fans on their journey there, as their debut at Number 1 on the Billboard 200 charts clearly demonstrates. But are the old fans buying into their new sound? The jury’s still out on that one.
