Slipknot - The Studio Album Collection (2014) [Official Digital Download]

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Slipknot - The Studio Album Collection (2014) [Official Digital Download]

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Slipknot - The Studio Album Collection (2014) [Includes 5 Albums]
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 (44,1) kHz | Time - 309:19 minutes | 5,52 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Front cover(s)

Slipknot is still heavy, still enamored of great, big walls of deeply textured layers of sound. They've approached their music with an eye towards stylistic expression that completely invalidates any and all comments about heavy metal clichés. Moreover, they've continued the exploration of melody that began on their first record.

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Slipknot - The Studio Album Collection (2014) [Official Digital Download]

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Slipknot - Slipknot (1999/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time - 50:05 minutes | 1,18 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Front cover

These nine Midwestern boys (all from Des Moines, IA) perform wearing orange industrial coveralls with UPC symbols on the front; each bandmember is identified by a number, which is painted on the sleeve of his coveralls. Each also wears a really nasty-looking mask. Judging from their appearance and from the sound of their debut album, it's easy to assume that they're upset about something. What it is exactly is kind of hard to tell, since the stuttering roar of Number 8's vocals is barely discernible through the jackhammer death metal drums, massed guitars, horror-show samples, and jittery turntable scratches that pummel the listener through almost every song. You thought Limp Bizkit was hard? They're the Osmonds. These guys are something else entirely. And it's pretty impressive. Although those lyrics that are discernible are not generally quotable on a family website, suffice it to say that the members of Slipknot are not impressed with their fathers, their hometown, or most anything else. "Surfacing" starts out by cursing pretty much everything generally, and then it starts getting aggressive, as shrieking guitar feedback alternates with DJ scratching. "Spit It Out" is speed rap-metal with an actual melody in the chorus; "Scissors" ends the program with a sound that quite simply couldn't get any more aggro without falling apart entirely, and by the end, the singer actually sounds like he's about to burst into tears.

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Slipknot - The Studio Album Collection (2014) [Official Digital Download]

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Slipknot - Iowa (2001/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time - 66:19 minutes | 1,51 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Front cover

After a couple years of relentless touring in support of their self-titled breakthrough album, Slipknot regrouped to record Iowa, an ode to their home state that consolidates and punctuates everything that had garnered the band its cultish following. The monstrous guitar crunch, the concrete-dense rhythmic foundation, the frenzied singing, and the overall madcap fashion of it all – Slipknot's trademark sound is very much at the forefront of this dark, dark album and is presented in epic form on the extended, album-closing title track, which brings to mind Children of the Corn-type terrors. Though not quite as commercially viable as the more straightforward Slipknot album, Iowa is a more interesting listen, one that envelopes you in its American Gothic shadow and leaves you feeling unsettled afterward. It's really all you could ask for in a Slipknot album, and then some – perhaps some more than you'd like, in fact, if you're not part of the cult.

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Slipknot - The Studio Album Collection (2014) [Official Digital Download]

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Slipknot - Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses) (2004/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time - 60:15 minutes | 440 MB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Front cover

Slipknot set out to construct the ultimate metal music flamethrower, ever since their genesis in a Des Moines, IA, basement. But they also deployed an agitprop campaign of masks, smocks, and bar codes that helped scare parents (like good metal should) and transform Slipknot fans into faithful "maggots." The Midwestern origin of all this craziness is genius, as the band's marrow-draining metal and twisted, fibrous mythology is antithetical to the region's milquetoast rep. Still, after the gothic nausea of 2001's Iowa, Slipknot's vitality dissipated in clouds of gaseous hype and individual indulgence. Had they grown fat on their thrones? Probably. But the layoff only makes Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses scream louder. Working with famously bearded helmer Rick Rubin – aka He Who Smites Bullsh*t – Slipknot pour the shrill accessibility of their self-titled debut down Iowa's dark sieve, and the result is flinty, angry, and rewardingly restless. Vol. 3 shares its lyrical themes of anger, disaffection, and psychosis with most of Slipknot's nu-metal peers. Lines like "I've screamed until my veins collapsed" and "Push my fingers into my eyes/It's the only thing that slowly stops the ache" (from the otherwise strong "Duality") aren't unique to this cult. But unlike so many, the band's sound rarely disassembles into genre building blocks: riff + glowering vocal + throaty chorus = Ozfest acceptance. What makes Vol. 3 tick is the dedication to making it a Slipknot album, and not just another flashy alt-metal billboard. The seething anger and preoccupation with pain is valid because it's componential to the group's uniquely branded havoc. "Blister Exists," "Three Nil," and "Opium of the People" are all standouts, strafing soft underbellies with rhythmic (occasionally melodic) vocals, stuttering, quadruple-helix percussion, and muted grindcore guitar. Rubin is integral to the album's power – his cataclysmic vocal filters and arrays of unidentifiable squiggle and squelch unite Vol. 3's various portions in wildly different ways. Just when the meditative "Circles" threatens to keel over from melodrama, in sputters strings of damaged electronics and percussion to lead it into "Welcome," which sounds like Helmet covering Relapse Records' entire catalog at once. Later, another counterpoint is offered, when the swift boot kicks of "Pulse of the Maggots" and "Before I Forget" separate "Vermilion"'s gothic and acoustic parts. Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses doesn't feel like Slipknot's final statement. It's a satisfying, carefully crafted representation of their career to date. But there's a sense that whatever Slipknot do next might be their ultimate broadcast to the faithful.

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Slipknot - The Studio Album Collection (2014) [Official Digital Download]

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Slipknot - All Hope Is Gone (2008/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time - 57:41 minutes | 729 MB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Front cover

There comes a time in every band's life where they take off the masks and grow up – then again, maybe not, as Slipknot have managed to dig deeper without ever shedding their grotesque veils. They're still wearing disguises but they have shed producer Rick Rubin, the metal legend who produced 2004's Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses, giving the nonet just the slightest hint of broader horizons beyond their relentless aggression – not enough for the band to crossover, but perhaps enough to earn grudging respect from listeners outside of metalheads. Of course, such respect is hardly granted to bands that wear monster maggot masks, so Slipknot's retreat to ugliness on their fourth album – a move telegraphed heavily by the cheery title All Hope Is Gone – isn't entirely surprising, nor is it unwelcome as this isn't a regression, it's more or less a consolidation of strengths. Certainly, the album gets off to a throttling start with "Gematria," a cluster of cacophony and for the longest time on All Hope it seems as if Slipknot will never let up on this pressure, as this is an onslaught of densely dark intricate riffs. So effective is this onslaught that when things do get a little softer a little later on, the album threatens to collapse like a soufflé, but that's only because the slower moments emphasize the group's odd tendency to sound like anonymous active rock when they untwist their rhythms and lay off on the double bass drums. Nowhere is this latent tendency for macho schmaltz more evident than on "Snuff," a stab at a power ballad that sounds disarmingly close to Nickelback, a bewildering incongruity that feels even stranger given the album's otherwise merciless attack. One more power ballad like this would be enough to derail the album, turning it into the crossover Vol. 3 never was despite Rubin's flourishes, but All Hope Is Gone as a whole winds up being as bleak and unforgiving as its title.

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Slipknot - The Studio Album Collection (2014) [Official Digital Download]

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Slipknot - .5: The Gray Chapter (2014)[Special Edition]
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time - 74:58 minutes | 1,69 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Front cover

While even a cursory listen to Slipknot's back catalog makes it clear the band are no strangers to working out their inner turmoil and pain through their music, never has that idea been so abundantly clear as it is on their fifth outing, .5: The Gray Chapter. Their first studio album since 2008's All Hope Is Gone, the album finds the band still recovering from the loss of founding bassist Paul Gray, whose death in 2010 hit them pretty hard. Rather than allowing their pain and anger destroy them, they were able to harness that energy and focus it, allowing them to create one of their most visceral and dynamic albums to date. Combining the punishing, pummeling metal of the band's early work with the more melodic focus of their later years, The Gray Chapter shows off just how unexpectedly wide the band's range is, going from a plaintive, atmospheric ballad like album-opener "XIX" to a thrash-inspired pummeling like "Sarcastrophe" without missing a beat. Along with being Slipknot's first album without Gray, it's also notable for being their first album not to feature longtime drummer Joey Jordison, who parted ways with the band in 2013. While Jordison will certainly be missed, the band's mysterious new drummer, whose identity the band have done their damndest not to reveal, slots in marvelously, seamlessly acclimating to the band's suddenly shifting tempos and styles. Listening to the album, it's clear that even though Slipknot aren't over the loss of a dear friend and colleague, they're able to channel their grief into a productive album, allowing them to continue moving forward while paying tribute to a fallen comrade with one of the strongest albums of their career.