Slipknot
All Hope Is Gone

"Collects everything we have done and shows what we are, as men and musicians. Undoubtedly the best production promoted by us and I challenge anyone to say otherwise"; "I don't think you'll be ready for this album".

This is how Corey Taylor, singer and spokesperson for Slipknot, presented "All Hope Is Gone" to the world a few days ago, and let's say right away that Taylor just missed an opportunity to keep quiet: not only is the fourth studio effort from the Iowa combo an unsuitable representation of what the 9 have always represented musically and emotionally, but above all, this work is exactly what the previous album "Vol 3 The Subliminal Verses" and the Taylor and Root project "Stone Sour" predicted for the band's future: a remarkable melodic addition to the usual brutal and death-leaning style Slipknot had accustomed us to.

To be clear, saying this I do not wish to trash the album before even examining the tracks, but it must be said that to make an objective analysis of the work in question, one shouldn't think of it as a "Slipknot product," as it is so different from previous productions as to represent something incongruous with the message of nonconformism and condemnation towards groups driven by the mainstream to lighten and commercialize their sound, which the 9 launched at the times of "Slipknot" and "Iowa." That said, let's move on to listening to the album...

The first track, "Execute", is the usual aggressive and disturbed instrumental intro that precedes each of their works, and it leads directly into "Gematria (The Killing Name)", an aggressive and violent track with a too confusing structure and perhaps excessive length (and probably the flaws are consequences of each other); in its defense, it can be said that in the heart of the song there is the first decent guitar solo.

In third position we have "Sulfur", which opens the doors to melody: the verses have rough singing while the chorus is clean and catchy (canonical schema of the 'Knot), the track is sufficient; it continues with the hit "Psychosocial", already released some time ago in a shorter version compared to the one on the album: this "Psychosocial" turns out to be much more complete and aggressive, while still remaining catchy and clean in the chorus; closing the melodic trio is "Dead Memories", the proposed second single, a rare case (before this album) in which Corey sings only clean.. the result is a pleasant track but really too out of Slipknot's box not to raise eyebrows.

Then follow "Vendetta" and "Butcher's Hook", negligible (perhaps only the first could say its piece live with the chorus "Hey, Hey, Hey!!"), and "Gehenna", another ultra-melodic episode of "All Hope Is Gone", here Corey tries shamelessly to imitate the best Johnatan Davis, and the result has its why; the song also has the best solo of the album, but once again suffers from excessive length (6:53).

"This Cold Black", after many incomprehensible tracks, tries to reinstate Slipknot's aggression standards, barely succeeding, while with "Wherein Lies Continue" we have a good piece founded on the classic growl/clean vocal dualism, well accomplished here; "Snuff" is by far the most melodic episode in the discography of the 9 from Iowa, it's a real ballad well interpreted by Taylor, focusing entirely on emotion, but lacks in songwriting ("so if you love me let me go", "if I can change I hope I'll never know": ???); anyway, as I have anticipated, while being a nice song listening to tracks like "(Sic)", "Surfacing" or "People = Shit" you would never have expected songs like this on a Slipknot album.

The album closes with the title track "All Hope Is Gone", already the most famous and heavy song on the album, which will surely make a great impression live.

Having analyzed the album as a whole, let me repeat it: if one considers "All Hope Is Gone" as a product on its own (or if there's a more open attitude towards changes), one will probably see the glass half full and find points of interest in the album, while if one is too attached to the old Slipknot, the title of the work will be extremely prophetic.