The masked metal phenomenon known as Slipknot have finally returned with their fourth studio album. Members of the band have been involved in various other bands and side-projects which has left its mark on the songs the nine-headed outfit created for their new album, entitled All Hope Is Gone. Personally I have always considered myself to be a “maggot” after experiencing these guys live at age fifteen, so let’s see if they still please me as much as I’m used to.

 

Where to begin reviewing this disc, I have no clue. This disc puzzles the hell out of me to be honest. There is so much on it that I like, yet there is also of stuff that bothers me a lot. First of all the mighty groove that this band works with is still very much apparent. But to my feeling, the overall songwriting process isn’t of such flabbergasting quality as we witnessed on Vol. 3. My biggest point of irritation is the length of the songs, a lot of them sound like they’re finished, but then they decide that it’s a good idea to repeat a catchy chorus or bridge. This leads to all the songs being longer than 4.30 with few exceptions. And in my opinion, these lengthy songs take away some of the impact of the album.

 

Although the albums starts out pretty strongly with tracks like ‘Gematria (The Killing Name)’, Sulfur’ and ‘Psychosocial’, it tone is set for more emo-like material with the track ‘Dead Memories’, which quite honestly would have fit much better on a Stone Sour record. This feeling appears with more than one song on All Hope Is Gone, yet it is not just because of Corey’s clean singing. It’s more the basic riffing, simple songwriting, and overall the lack of real musical experiments of which the previous record was flooded with. They just took it too easy in my point of view, for it is now very clear that they did not supersede themselves with this record.

 

The worst of all the tracks are luckily the three bonus tracks which should’ve been saved for a B-side or something. The Bloodstone Mix of ‘Vermillion Pt. 2’ is nice to hear though, but ‘Child Of Burning Time’ and the utterly horrible album ender ‘Til We Die’ can be flushed down the toilet I’d say. The special edition of this album of course also comes with a making of this record DVD, which is made in the vein of Slipknot’s second DVD. Fun to watch, but not really educative when it comes to production techniques.

 

Well how to conclude a review of a record which both pleases me as well as annoys me. One thing is clear to me, their musical achievements are of a lesser quality when these nine guys are not guided by a master like Rick Rubin. But there are definitely good tracks on All Hope Is Gone, so if I just skip the tracks that suck real badly I think I can live with it. I just hope they won’t continue on this path, because in that case all hope is truly gone.