Album Review: Slipknot - .5: The Gray Chapter

We're gonna do this a little differently than when I did Cannibal Corpse, because since the cd literally was released today I can't put up a bunch of links to it, seeing as I wrote this while streaming the album yesterday.  Here's where I listened though.

Update 5/7/15

Ok, here goes.

Slipknot has gone through another sound change with this album with Corey changing his singing style again, and with the surprising comeback of Sid and his turntables.

I know everybody is thinking that the drums are gonna take a hit due to Joey being gone, or that the bass is doing poorly because of Paul's death, but I feel that both held up reasonably well.  All that Paul did was play the guitar lines anyway, and the new drummer seems to have filled into the slot that joey left very smoothly.

While I understand that the whole point of the album was really talking about how they felt about Paul's death, I do feel like it wasn't the best direction they could have gone it.  Seriously though, the song Skeptic is exclusively about this, and it really just comes off as almost pathetic feeling.  I get that losing your best friend is horrible, but it's been 4 years.

Following is a no particular order list of my opinions on the songs.


Favorite Tracks:
The Devil In I - Other than some pretty sub-par lyrical work by Corey, I do really enjoy this song.  It has a lot of the "new Slipknot" feeling that I expect another of their albums to have while still being a solid track.

AOV - at first, I didn't care for this song, but as it went on I started to enjoy it more.  Kind of a mix between old Slipknot and new Slipknot

Lech - Like The Devil In I, this feels like a natural progression of Slipknots style in their music.

Nomadic - Heck yeah, this is a good one.  This is another bit of what you'd expect to hear after All Hope Is Gone came out, with good solos and some good rhythm to it.

The One That Kills The Least - So it seems like all of my favorite songs on the album are the songs that fit into what I thought the next album should sound like.

Custer - Sike!  This song sounds so much like the first album it could have been a rejected track.  Just listen to that chorus and picture them playing it live.  People are gonna go absolutely insane and it'll be awesome.  I see this song joining the unholy trinity of crowd participation that are "Spit It Out", "Surfacing", and "People = Shit" as the heavy hitters of the show.  What does one call a 4 part trinity though....

The Negative One - Much like Custer, this song is a throwback to old Slipknot.  Not quite feeling the same as the first album, I would place this as a mix between the self titled and Iowa.



Neutral Tracks:
XIX - It's an intro track.  Eh.

Killpop- It's not too bad, but it's not to great either.  I feel like this is one of the tracks that I'm gonna like more later though.

Sarcastrophe - Not bad, but not amazing.  I don't want to draw the Stone Sour analogy, but it does seem really similar to one of their songs more than Slipknot.

Goodbye - So this song is about what you'd expect.  It's one of the slower ones, and it's really only eh.

Be Prepared For Hell - This is actually a pretty good track.  It feels like an intermission that fits in the flow of everything pretty well.

If Rain Is What You Want - Corey.  Stop singing.  This is Slipknot, not some pansy ass singing band.  Actually I do enjoy this song as a closer, but that is all it really is.  A closer.


Least Favorites:
Sleptic - It's a shame, cause I really like the music on this track, but I can't get over the fact that lyrically this song sounds like some emo metalcore song.



So I suppose that my initial disappointment with this album has been put on hold, since there are some killer tracks on here.  At the same time though, I'm probably not buying it for a while either.  I do look forward to seeing what Slipknot will do in the future with the new lineup.