"I Am Hated": "They all lost their dad, or their wife just died/They never got to go outside - Shut up/Nobody gives a fuck." Somebody had to say it: When did metal become a bellyacher's music?
If it was just about excess, Iowa would be impressive but not deadly. The compound slash of rusted-machete guitars and turntable wibble is now common tongue in hard rock. And there isn't much shock value left in the words fuck and shit, which Taylor uses in some variation more than forty times in Iowa's sixty-six minutes. You really notice his knack for violent oath and psychotic metaphor when he keeps it clean in the soft-loud dementia of "Gently" and the thundering paranoia of "New Abortion."
But the quality of ruthlessness and sustained physical exertion here is breathtaking: the impossible velocity of Joey Jordison's kick-drum gallop and snare rolls in "People = Shit" and "Disasterpiece"; the way DJ Sid Wilson and programmer Craig Jones multiply the stiletto-lick and power-chord math of Mick Thomson and Jim Root like a pair of extra guitars; the pagan-kettledrum terror and thick-riff groans of "Skin Ticket." Ross Robinson, who co-produced the album with the nine men of Slipknot, is now officially the Phil Spector of devil boogie. With an ear for both din and dynamics, Robinson packs the noise into a hard, black tornado that is monophonic in force but never obscures the band members' individual furies.
Iowa's fifteen-minute title track is actually less interesting for Taylor's corpse-love soliloquy than the band's vivid evocation of a makeshift-cornfield grave at midnight. It's weird, too, to hear Slipknot pull some punches in "Left Behind," an obvious radio biscuit that sticks out here like a clean thumb. Yet those are minor beefs. With Iowa, Slipknot go to the head of the slag heap, the new kings of extreme. They may wear clown masks, but they're no bozos.
DAVID FRICKE
(RS 879 - October 11, 2001)
