Slipknot: Ranking The Albums
Slipknot are a musical and cultural phenomenon, and the enthusiasm for the 25th anniversary celebrations of their self-titled album in 2024/25 shows just how much they matter to the heavy music world. There are numerous ‘Slipknot albums ranked’ lists out there, so this list goes a step further, including every full-length commercial release including their DVDs, live albums and compilations, as well as the original studio albums - and they are ranked in order of how essential and replayable they are. Have your say in the comments below!
For reasons largely unknown, Slipknot didn’t play a show in Mexico until 2017, in support of their comeback album ‘.5 - The Gray Chapter’. Given the reverance in which they are clearly held in Mexico, Slipknot chose to document the occasion with a feature-length film and accompanying live album.
It is certainly impressive to see how enormous - and enormously devoted - the crowd was, and it is good to have a document of Slipknot during the ‘Gray Chapter’ era, with new members V-Man on bass as a replacement for the tragically deceased Paul Gray, and Jay Weinberg filling in on drums after Joey Jordison’s unexpected sacking. However, aside from marking the apparent historical significance of the event, it is unlikely you will watch the film or listen to the record more than once.
There are far better live albums than ‘Day of the Gusano’. Corey’s voice sounds worn out from extensive touring. The mix is brutally heavy but somewhat muddy, leaving the percussive intricacies of ‘Prosthetics’ and ‘Vermilion’ slightly lacking. It is great to hear the rare airings of deep cuts ‘Metabolic’ and ‘Me Inside’, as well as the recently-released ‘Sarcastrophe’, ‘Custer’ and ‘Devil In I’ - but the regular fixtures (‘Wait and Bleed’, ‘Surfacing’, ‘Spit it Out’ etc) sound far better on other live albums.
Standout Tracks: ‘Metabolic’, ‘Sarcastrophe’, ‘Devil In I’
It is hard to know exactly who ‘Antennas To Hell’ was aimed at - especially as streaming was alive and well in 2012 and fans could have made their own playlists of the exact same tracklisting; and CD-buying fans would almost certainly own the original albums already.
The music itself is, of course, fantastic - but the chronological tracklisting makes ‘Antennas To Hell’ a frustratingly rushed, slapdash tour of the ‘hits’ from Slipknot’s first 4 albums; and it misses the opportunity to compile some rare, lesser-known songs or to make the tracks flow more as an album in its own right.
We do, admittedly, get the Terry Date mix of ‘Vermilion’, which is arguably stronger than the version on ‘Vol.3’, with a fuller, deeper sound and greater sense of dynamics. We are also treated to the live version of ‘The Heretic Anthem’ from the ‘Disasterpieces’ DVD, which is superb; and the 2-CD version of the album comes with the audio of the ‘(Sic)nesses’ DVD, showcasing Slipknot’s storming headlining set at Download Festival 2009.
‘Antennas To Hell’ is stuffed full of incredible songs, but it is largely a pointless cash-in.
Standout Tracks: ‘Vermilion’ (Terry Date Mix)
You have probably heard the legend of ‘Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat’, the first Slipknot album which was released in 1996 and has since been largely disowned by the band. Featuring original vocalist Anders Colsefni, it is worth a listen to hear the embryonic versions of what would become some of Slipknot’s most enduring early songs - namely ‘(Sic)’ (here titled ‘Slipknot’), ‘Gently’, ‘Iowa’ (here titled ‘Killers Are Quiet’), ‘Tattered and Torn’ and ‘Only One’.
The original album can be found on YouTube here. There is also now a new version, re-recorded and released in 2024 by Anders Colsefni, in partnership with Australian nu-metallers Kaosis. This new version is on Spotify and is actually ok, though Slipknot fans may feel uncomfortable hearing highly polished versions of - let’s face it - very mediocre songs, and with suspiciously programmed-sounding drums.
As a historial artefact, the 1996 ‘Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat’ is fascinating - but it is little more than a demo and is for completists only. There are very good reasons for calling 1999’s self-titled ‘Slipknot’ their actual debut album. This early attempt doesn’t come close.
Standout Tracks: ‘Gently’
The concept of Voliminal is enough to make any maggot salivate: unrestricted access to each Slipknot member, masked and unmasked, with footage filmed during the ‘Vol.3: The Subliminal Verses’ cycle. Voliminal is a feature-length film, full of camcorder tour video, backstage antics, live performances and random clips of observations from all over the world (though quite why we need to see several clips of overflowing toilets, or stage crew standing around, is unclear).
In reality, there is so much footage that the main movie eventually becomes a bit of a self-indulgent slog. The ‘jumpthefuckup’ moment in ‘Spit it Out’ is always a sight to behold, but we see it multiple times from different shows. The film would have been just as impactful at half its length.
The unmasked interviews are the highlight, featuring candid moments with Joey, Paul, Corey, Mick, Jim, Clown, Chris and Sid, and a brief, creepy and hilarious non-verbal exchange with Craig. Especially in light of losing Joey and Paul, and Chris and Craig leaving, these are a fascinating time capsule from when Slipknot moved up to legendary status in support of their excellent 3rd album.
Standout Moments: Jim Root talking about the importance of having no regrets; watching behind the scenes of Joey’s acrobat, upside-down drum solo; Craig's blurry, brief silent ‘interview’.
Retaining the same lineup who made the stellar ‘We Are Not Your Kind’, expectations for ‘The End, So Far’ were high. With the benefit of hindsight, ‘The End, So Far’ suffered from 3 key issues:
1) Corey Taylor hyping it in advance by comparing it to ‘Vol. 3’. When something is put on a pedestal, there is only one way it can go. If Slipknot were really wanting to go for ‘experimental’ on this record, they could have pushed the weirdness boat out further.
2) Opening the record with ‘Adderall’. ‘Adderall’ is actually a decent song in isolation, but putting a non-typical Slipkot song first sets the tone for a challenging listen, and a lot of people couldn’t get past it.
3) The absence of lyrics that everyone could relate to. We can sing and scream along to ‘Left Behind’, ‘Duality’, ‘Disasterpiece’ and ‘People=Shit’ - but there are no real moments on ‘The End, So Far’ where the lyrics would mean anything to anyone other than Corey. ‘The Chapeltown Rag’ is a great example. “When everything is God online, nothing is”. Right…
‘The End, So Far’ has proved to be Slipknot’s most divisive record to date. It does feature some strong moments, such as the opening of the crushing ‘Warranty’, the multi-layered vocals in the chorus of ‘Medicine For The Dead’, wicked blastbeats in ‘The Chapeltown Rag’, the superb anthem ‘The Dying Song’ and underrated, soulful gem ‘De Sade’. Unfortunately the lacklustre blues of ‘Acidic’, the half-arsed Stone Sour offcut ‘Heirloom’ and the trying-too-hard-to-be-heavy ‘H377’ (chanting the nonsensical “One of us knows who hates me, one of us loves that” - seriously?!) let the album down.
The fact that Jay and Craig both left suddenly at the end of the touring cycle, and that the band played nothing but the 3 singles (‘The Dying Song’, ‘Yen’ and ‘The Chapeltown Rag’) live, suggest that all was not well in the Slipknot camp for this record. With Eloy now on drums, an unnamed replacement for Craig now in place, and the 25th anniversary celebrations out of the way, hopefully the next album will be more focused and monumental.
Standout Tracks: ‘Medicine For The Dead’, ‘De Sade’, ‘The Dying Song (Time To Sing)’
Not only did the Vol.3 tour produce the 'Voliminal’ movie, but we were also treated to the exhaustive 2-disc live album ‘9.0 Live’.
This isn't Slipknot's best live album, especially as it comes from multiple different shows, leading to several different locations being mentioned, and some fade-outs between tracks which spoil the ‘live’ experience - but it has an extensive range of tracks from the first 3 albums, and the sound is huge and heavy.
Some of the Vol.3 tracks actually sound better here than on the record, especially ‘The Nameless’ (the band must have agreed, because this was the song that was used to promote the album) and ‘Pulse Of The Maggots’. In fact, the tracks that do less well are the older ones such as ‘Get This’, ‘Spit It Out’ and ‘Eeyore’ where the energy levels aren’t at their usually high standards, and Corey’s vocals seem to struggle (compare ‘Surfacing’ here to the version on ‘(Sic)nesses’ and you’ll hear the difference).
Standout Tracks: ‘The Nameless’, ‘The Blister Exists’, ‘Three Nil’
When Slipknot returned to the stage to support their second record ‘Iowa’, they were genuinely unhinged and dangerous. They were fighting each other. They brought pyro with them. And the music was truly ferocious.
‘Disasterpieces’ captures Slipknot at their feral best. Not only is their performance on fire (literally), but the DVD came with options to watch the show from the perspective of some of the individual band members, as a few of them were fitted with video cameras (bear in mind that this was 2002, long before go-pros were commonplace, so this was truly cutting-edge).
The sound quality is immaculate, brutally heavy and well-mixed, and Disasterpieces is the perfect document of the unhinged chaos of the ‘Iowa’ shows in 2001/2002. You can almost smell the sweat and vomit. Even just the intro, hearing the extended ‘(515)’ at ear-splitting volume, while the band argue backstage about the setlist before taking the stage behind a giant curtain, leading into a crushing ‘People=Shit’, is a pure adrenaline rush. Elsewhere, ‘Eeyore’ is manic, ‘Left Behind’ and ‘My Plague’ show how Slipknot’s more melodic side would evolve on future albums, and ‘Gently’ - complete with a flurry of snow - is deeply disturbing.
Standout Tracks: ‘Disasterpiece’, ‘Gently’, ‘The Heretic Anthem’
Following ‘Vol.3’, Slipknot were HUGE. Anticipation for their 4th record was at fever pitch, especially given the length between albums. Admittedly we had had some decent music from Jim and Corey in Stone Sour; and Clown, Joey and Sid had all made some interesting albums with Dirty Little Rabbits, Murderdolls and DJ Starscream respectively - but these, and the movie ‘Voliminal’, amounted to little more than palate-cleansers' before our next fix of Slipknot.
The first taste of the album was the rabid title track ‘All Hope Is Gone’, an absolute rager which was curiously dropped from the setlist after just one performance. Then came ‘Psychosocial’, a Rammstein-flavoured, propulsive stomp with a fantastic melodic chorus.
The album itself is a curious one. The opening 4 songs (‘Gematria’, ‘Sulfur’, ‘Psychosocial’ and ‘Dead Memories’) are absolutely blinding, as are the final pair of ‘Snuff’ and ‘All Hope Is Gone’ - from an acoustic ballad to a brutal blast beat-drive anthem.
The problem comes with the 5 songs in the album’s middle, all of which flog half-baked ideas to death. ‘Vendetta’ and ‘This Cold Black’ could have worked if they been more unhinged and less on-the-grid (Ross Robinson, who produced the first 2 albums, famously criticised video footage of each person being recorded one at a time in the studio, sitting down - whereas they used to record everyone together at the same time, standing up as if they were performing live, with no click track). ‘Gehenna’ and ‘Wherein Lies Continue’ tread similar ground to ‘Prosthetics’, ‘Skin Ticket’ and ‘Purity’, but are largely forgettable and forced. And ‘Butcher’s Hook’ starts with an interesting riff but then goes absolutely nowwhere.
As of the beginning of 2025, we are still awaiting ‘Look Outside Your Window’, a separate album which was recorded in the same sessions. Perhaps, once this is eventually released, we may re-evaluate ‘All Hope Is Gone’. As it stands, 6 of its songs are brilliant, while 5 should probably have been left on the cutting room floor.
Standout tracks: ‘All Hope Is Gone’, ‘Sulfur’, ‘Snuff’
For many, ‘Welcome To Our Neighborhood’ was their first experience of seeing Slipknot visually, not just hearing the music. You’ll never forget the first time you hear Corey Taylor utter the immortal line, “This song is your new National F**king Anthem. This song is called Surfacing!”, followed by an absolutely crushing performance that was filmed at one of Slipknot’s legendary Ozzfest shows around the time of releasing their self-titled record. Originally released on VHS in 1999, ‘Welcome To Our Neighborhood’ received a DVD release in 2003 and is essential viewing for any Slipknot fan.
Following ‘Surfacing’, we are shown a series of short interview slips, the notorious music video for ‘Spit It Out’, based on the horror move The Shining, a mind-blowing performance of ‘Wait and Bleed’, and each member introducing themselves.
‘Welcome To Our Neighborhood’ was short and sweet, but the perfect introduction to Slipknot in 1999, and a fantastic statement of intent. It can be streamed on YouTube, including a bonus feature of a music video for the creepy nightmare that is ‘Scissors’.
The best live album of all time???
(Sic)nesses is Slipknot at their most feral. Whilst current drummer Eloy Casagrande excels at maintaining a controlled speed, Joey Jordison’s style was always looser, more adrenaline-fueled, and like a train ready to come off its rails at any moment. This leads to some seriously sped-up and exhilarating versions of tracks like ‘Psychosocial’, ‘(Sic)’, ‘Surfacing’ and ‘People=Shit’.
‘Disasterpiece’ is an incredible live document of the Iowa era, but ‘(Sic)nesses’ has the added advantage of including songs from both ‘Vol. 3’ and ‘All Hope Is Gone’ too, played with the unhinged rage of nine men possessed (and apparently highly caffeinated).
The video of the show (which you can watch here) is truly stunning, not to mention unnerving to see it go from broad daylight to pitch dark as the show goes on (the best turning point is ‘Left Behind’, where things get darker, both literally and figuratively). The stage production is huge, with pyro, elaboration decorations, video screens on Clown and Chris’ drums, and Joey’s drums at their most ostentatious. There are so many incredible moments, not least the truly epic ‘Jumpdafuckup’ moment in closing song ‘Spit It Out’ (around 80,000 British metalheads going absolutely mental, while Joey Jordison soars above the stage).
The audio-only version is just as good, and is the best-sounding live document of Slipknot to date. Put it on loud, feel your house shake, and sing / scream along to a perfect ‘All Hope Is Gone’-era setlist.
Standout Tracks: ‘(Sic)’, ‘Get This’, ‘Dead Memories’
‘.5: The Gray Chapter’ may be Slipknot’s darkest record - even more so than ‘Iowa’. Slipknot had already made a career from darkness, hate and aggression, but with ‘The Gray Chapter’ they added grief and loss to their emotional palette. ‘Goodbye’ is a sorrowful ballad full of desperation and hopelessness, while ‘Lech’ makes direct reference to the concept of ‘Survivor’s Guilt’; and ‘Skeptic’ is a brutally direct ode to their fallen comrade.
After all their talk about being ‘The Nine’ prior to Paul Gray’s death and Joey Jordison’s unexpected departure, many people assumed that Slipknot were finished in 2012/13. It was therefore a total shock when ‘The Negative One’ appeared out of nowhere. ‘Devil In I’ followed shortly afterwards, complete with a genuinely shocking music video, introducing (and subsequently stabbing to death…) the 2 new members, alongside each other band member dying in various horrific ways. Brutal.
It is actually very hard to pick fault in ‘The Gray Chapter’, especially as deep cuts like ‘The One That Kills The Least’, ‘Nomadic’ and ‘Lech’ get better with every listen, unlike the equivalent songs in ‘All Hope Is Gone’ which quickly became ones to skip.
‘If Rain Is What You Want’ is probably the weakest song overall, especially when Slipknt’s album closers (‘Scissors’, ‘Iowa’, ‘Danger: Keep Away’ and ‘All Hope Is Gone’) all made huge statements. But this is nit-picking really - because ‘The Gray Chapter’ is a triumph, and it kick-stated the second phase of Slipknot’s fascinating existence.
Standout tracks: ‘The Negative One’, ‘AOV’, ‘Devil In I’
It is curious why the first taste we had of the ‘Vol.3’ sound was ‘Don’t Get Close’, which was included in a random PS2 game. It was a few weeks before the album was going to be released, and we were presented with a lacklustre b-side which sounded incomplete and far below the quality we had come to expect from Slipknot. As such, there was some understandable concern about whether Slipknot had lost their edge after ‘Iowa’.
Thankfully, ‘Don’t Get Close’ was a red herring. ‘Vol.3: (The Subliminal Verses)’ is superb.
There are still moments of heaviness and darkness, but this time around the sonic palette was much broader, with acoustic guitars (‘Circle’, ‘Vermilion Pt.2’), increased technicality (try air-drumming along to the intros of ‘Opium of the People’ and ‘Welcome’ if you dare), multi-layered vocals (‘Prelude 3.0’, ‘The Nameless’), discordant, Slayer-esque guitar solos (‘Pulse of the Maggots’) and twisted balladry (‘Vermilion’, ‘Danger, Keep Away’).
The main criticism of Vol.3 is the production, which has a sratchy, thin sound with a lack of low end and a disappointing drum mix (not quite ‘St Anger’, but not a million miles away either); and Corey’s scream has a very different tone to how he sounded on ‘Iowa’ and ‘Slipknot’ (he has since said, on multiple occasions, that he was unhappy with his vocal performances and how they sounded). That said, these elements do combine to give ‘Vol.3’ a distinctive sound, and it is fair to say that there is no other album on Earth that sounds like this.
For a varied, experimental album with all kinds of twists and turns, ‘Vol.3’ takes some beating.
Standout Tracks: ‘Vermilion’, ‘The Blister Exists’, ‘Duality’
On Halloween 2018, completely out of the blue, Slipknot released a standalone single, ‘All Out Life’. With an Iowa-esque sound and as astoundingly powerful chorus (“Old does not mean dead, new does not mean best”), this was a perfectly-timed treat. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the chant of “We are not your kind” towards the end would then become the title of their next album, the following August - even though ‘All Out Life’ was absent from the tracklisting.
‘We Are Not Your Kind’ has moments with the heaviness of the self-titled album (‘Birth of the Cruel’, ‘Red Flag’, ‘Orphan’), some of the emotionally-harrowing darkness of ‘Iowa’ (‘A Liar’s Funeral’, ‘Solway Firth’), stadium-sized choruses (‘Unsainted’, ‘Nero Forte’) and the quirky experimentation of ‘Vol. 3’ (‘Spiders’, ‘Death Because of Death’). In fact, in many ways, ‘We Are Not Your Kind’ combined all the best elements of Slipknot and presented them with a modern, pristine-sounding sheen.
You could argue that this record spreads too many ideas too thinly, or that it is too clean-sounding. It is also fair to say that the 13 combined minutes of ‘My Pain’ and ‘Not Long For This World’ drag on for too long towards the end of the album; and you could certainly argue that Corey’s ‘WANYK’ mask is the worst ever of the Slipknot masks. Or… you could just enjoy this record for the proficient, entertaing and varied piece of art that it is.
Standout Tracks: ‘Solway Firth’, ‘Critical Darling’, ‘Spiders’
3 drummers, 2 guitarists, a bassist, a singer, a DJ and a Sampler, from some random place called Des Moines, Iowa, wearing masks and boiler suits and producing some of the heaviest, most brilliant metal music ever heard. Slipknot were, and still are, unlike any other.
For many, the first taste of Slipknot was ‘Eyeless’, within its wicked Drum’n’Bass intro, serrated guitars, manic drums and throat-lacerating vocals. Even if your introduction to Slipknot was instead the comparatively radio-friendly ‘Wait and Bleed’, it was still heavy enough to level a house.
And what about the brutal ‘(Sic)’, the thunderous anthems ‘Surfacing’, ‘Spit It Out’, ‘Liberate’ and ‘No Life’? What about the genuinely creepy atmosphere created by ‘Prosthetics’ and ‘Purity’, or the outright darkness and apocalyptic ending to ‘Scissors’? How about the fact that ‘Eeyore’ and ‘Get This’ didn’t even make it onto the record? 25 years on, and ‘Slipknot’ still astounds and destroys with every listen.
Standout Tracks: ‘Eyeless’, ‘Surfacing’, ‘Spit It Out’, ‘Eeyore’
How do you follow up one of the greatest debut metal albums of all time? Simple: you make ‘Iowa’ - and you go darker, heavier and even more intense.
There is a quality about ‘Iowa’ that is hard to put your finger on. It isn’t just an album that you hear. It is an album you can wear. It has a smell to it - a truly nasty, unpleasant smell that won’t wash off. And it is utterly, utterly compelling.
The 9 masked metallers didn’t take time off after touring their debut album. They went straight back into the studio, with Ross Robinson once again, and produced an ugly, abrasive record that, yes, did have some catchy moments (‘My Plague’ and ‘Left Behind’ were the obvious choices for singles) but was generally dark and twisted. Screams can be heard throughout. Nightmarish sounds permeate every song. There is a looseness to the playing that suggest the band performed every song live in the studio, like their lives depended on it.
We return to the spooksville of ‘Prosthetics’ and ‘Scissors’ with the magnificent ‘Skin Ticket’ and ‘Gently', and the 15-minute pulse of ‘Iowa’. Joey’s drumming expands into blast beats in ‘People=Shit’ and ‘New Abortion’. And the incredible ‘Disasterpiece’ has a claim as greatest Slipknot song of all time, with a Surfacing-esque stomping riff leading to brutal lyrics (“I wanna slit your throat and f*** the wound - wanna push my face in and feel the swoon”), twisted melodies (“Pull your hands away. I’m gone, goodbye, it’s so depressing”) and huge climax. This was utter catharsis, as is the whole album. After an hour with ‘Iowa’, you may feel exhausted. You may feel energised. You may feel upset. You may feel dirty. You will almost certainly feel changed.
Standout Tracks: ‘Disasterpiece’, ‘The Heretic Anthem’, ‘Everything Ends’
