New Slipknot Album: 10 Things The Band Need To Get Right

9. All Hope Is Not Gone

The band's last outing was a big step in the wrong direction, and if they're to succeed with new material, they'll need to learn from the mistakes that they made with much of that album. Slipknot's first LP was a tour de force of sheer aggression, layered with unnerving samples and fuelled by a torrent of percussion. It was refreshing in a world filled with Limp Bizkits and Mudvaynes to see a darker, messier and more technically-impressive band achieving some level of mainstream success. Their sophomore LP, Iowa, improved upon core elements of their first album, but it was their third outing, Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses, that proved Slipknot were able to break free from the shackles of the nu-metal genre, with their most varied and ambitious work to date. Admittedly, All Hope Is Gone had a lot to live up to, but to fail so spectacularly in meeting those expectations is rare. Everything that had made their work so invigorating in the past was desperately missing from their latest LP. Unimaginative writing, repetitive songs and clichéd lyrics led to what felt like a mailed-0in album; an unnecessary addition to an outstanding body of work. Pit-opening breakdowns, drop-tuned riffs and death-metal percussion should have resulted in an album that was at least on par with their first effort, but the pieces felt forced together, with only a few songs standing out among the B-side fodder. Slipknot had spent a decade escaping the confines of nu-metal, only to release an album that threw them straight back into that drab, uninspiring cell.