Slipknot is not a safe pick for a blog about metal. Lots of aging Gen X metalheads have hated Slipknot since the day it was created and refused to accept it into the fold. Why? mumble mumble “it doesn’t sound like metal” mumble mumble “the masks are a gimmick.” Well, you got me on the second one. The masks sure are a gimmick—but metal has always been full of gimmicks. Kiss’s make-up and secrete identities were a gimmick. Twisted Sister’s cross-dressing getup was a gimmick. Yngwie Malmsteen’s gorgeous curls and bundles of bangles and self-comparison to virtuoso violinist Niccolo Paganini is a gimmick. GWAR’s insane latex alien costumes are DEFINITELY a gimmick. And if you want to get really meta about it, Metallica’s no-makeup denim-‘n’-leather longhair image is also a gimmick, in a way.
But the first one isn’t true: Slipknot sounds like metal. Or at least, for listeners who don’t throw a fit and refuse to listen, Slipknot’s music does all the same things that metal does for you, and does them in spades.
If Slipknot were just another metal/metal-adjacent band, there wouldn’t be much of a story. Some think it’s metal, some don’t; you say tomayto, I say tomahto. We’ve all heard that before, a hundred or a thousand times.
But there’s something more to it than just a squabble over genre boundaries: Slipknot’s best songs are true neck-wreckers. Simply put, Slipknot is one of the heaviest bands of the late twentieth century, whether you like them or not. So why are Slipknot songs such bangers?