In the spirit of everything ending, I'd like to put in a vote for the snow to chill out a bit. As some of you may be aware, I live in Erie, PA. You may have heard of us recently as the city that got almost 5 feet of snow on Christmas. It's pretty cool, we just got hit with another snow warning as of writing this post, which is active until 4 AM on the 31st. We're probably about to get another foot of snow, no biggie.
David Wolter - "Today's snowfall of 12.2" means #Erie has seen 83.8" since Christmas Eve. That is more than the entire 2016/2017 season (78.6"). The total for the month is now at 120.8." In a typical December we average 27.5." #Snowmageddon"
There ya go, some fun stats for ya.
But yeah, end of the year, right? The time when you leave all kinds of things in the back in 2017 so you can move on and mature. You know, the good 'ol resolution stuff. Y'all have anything?
Personally I've never been a huge fan of resolutions. They're mostly just self serving things to make you look good in January on Facebook, but that's about it. I'd rather make sweeping statements like "I'm gonna lose some weight" instead of "I'm gonna go to the gym 3 times a week this year". It's more realistic.
But yeah, don't let me crap on your parade, have fun! It's party day after all, turn up.
One of my favorite times of the year for this blog is Halloween. I hate Christmas music, and the aesthetic of fall and horror fits a lot better with my general style and music tastes.
But the thing I'm most excited about it though is that my personal favorite theme I run of the whole year is here. The Week Of Evil.
The Week Of Evil is where I dredge up some of my favorite bands with nasty reputations or just bands I know of from how they're talked about. I really enjoy searching through some Black Metal playlists to find stuff that's way off from what I'm familiar with to introduce you to them.
I mean, I know you won't like them, but I like the process, so like, appreciate that and the fun I have.
So yeah, let's ramp up the energy and darkness for the rest of the month, it's gonna be a great time. Here's Slipknot.
Band: Slipknot
Song: Spit It Out
Album: Slipknot
Genre: Nu-Metal
Language: Strong
So the special part about this post is that I actually managed to get a live video of the song I wanted to post. Sure, I could have found them for the others, but this one I actually had ahead of time. Download 2009 is one of my favorite Slipknot live concerts to watch, so this was a no brainer for me.
The sheer power and energy of a Slipknot live show is something that not a lot of people are able to compete with. Though Corey swears just a little more than he needs to, the experience as a whole is straight up jaw dropping.
This is one of Slipknot's best live songs hands down. The way they get the crowd going is just straight up psychotic. Here's a live video to check out, it's fantastic.
I've always loved this song though ever since I bought this album. It was a big deal in my opinion since Slipknot was such an edgy band for me at the time, but I managed to get over that and really just enjoy what the band had to offer.
Not to say this first record isn't a little weird. There's a couple songs that creep me out a little bit toward the end, but that doesn't detract from how solid the album as a whole is. Hope ya dig the song.
Who doesn't like Slipknot? Whole lotta people actually with increasing numbers because the frontman, Corey Taylor, keeps doing things to keep himself in the spotlight. You know, like breaking a fan's phone who was filming in the front row. Classy Corey, classy.
Hey, his personal opinions aside the music is still kinda fun to listen to and, especially with the old stuff, it just kinda goes crazy at times. Not this song so much, this is one of their more radio friendly songs. It's still good though, so I hope you enjoy it.
You may remember this from when I reviewed this album, but since that was an album review I thought it would be cool to remind people about it.
This is a very high energy song that is absolutely insane to see people go crazy to, so if you like watching concert videos I'd advise checking it out here.
Band: Slipknot
Genre: Nu-Metal, Metal
Themes: Dark
Slipknot, super edgy and all that. Well this was by far their darkest album, Iowa. It has some of their best songs on it and some of their angriest material. In fact, till this newest album it had the darkest and angriest songs.
This song is the only song on the entire album that I can play at work, and that's only because there's technically no swearing in it. Still though, check it out cause it's really good.
I post Slipknot probably once every other month or so, but I don't care. It's a band I like and you'll have to just put up with that.
Volume 3 was their weird experimental album. You follow the brutal hatred of Iowa with something that's just... Different. It had lower key songs, the subject matter was still messed up, but in a different way, and the had progressed greatly in the realm of sound.
The stand out tracks for me include:
The Blister Exists
Three Nil
Duality
Opium Of The People
Vermilion
The Pulse Of The Maggots
Before I Forget
Vermilion pt 2
Really I do enjoy most all of this album, and it has a really strong beginning half that continues all the way to the last couple tracks. And honestly, those are good too, but I just don't happen to like them as much.
I know nothing about this band either come to think of it. I know they are a foreign band, I know they don't usually sing in english, and I know they have a YouTube channel. That's it.
This is a sweet cover though since they have turned a reasonably heavy song into a really nice sounding acoustic cover. You'll remember how "hate-y" some of Slipknot stuff is, so you should be really impressed at this.
Another Slipknot song I do enjoy a great deal. I really really love any songs with marching and air raid sirens actually. It's a style to the music that I really like.
So I'm on a bit of a Nu-Metal kick right now, and I though what better band to continue with then the only band I listed the other day that I haven't made a post about yet.
So as you can see, these guys bear a reasonably similar look to Slipknot. There's 9 of them, they've all got masks, and they play very similar music. Also, like Slipknot, they change what their masks look like reasonably regularly.
They have a funny fan fight story though, which you can watch here.
Musically, I am both hot and cold with these guys. Sometimes I'm really into them, then at other times I might hear a song that I don't like as much and I drop them for a good few months. Eh, whatever though.
As a heads up, they have some really weird music videos. Also this was a different mask era where they all looked the same. Just as a heads up.
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.
Slipknot is one of those bands that the metal community really are split in their opinions on. Yet another band to come out of the Nu-Metal wave, their sound has evolved to a much more metal tone than it used to be.
With having lost their bassist Paul Gray in 2010 and the sacking of their drummer Joey Jordison in 2014 I decided I should look back at some of my favorite songs.
After the release of their first album which was really pretty good for the most part, people seemed to expect an album full of singles for their second album. Instead they got Iowa.
Iowa is one of the most hateful albums I've ever listened to, with such tracks as Skin Ticket, The Heretic's Anthem, Everything Ends, and People = Shit. There is so much raw anger behind this album it's not even funny, but it makes it sound so strong and powerful that I am ok with it.
Out of the small list I gave you, this is probably my favorite track off of the album.
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