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. 3's various portions in wildly different ways. Rubin is integral to the album's power - his cataclysmic vocal filters and arrays of unidentifiable squiggle and squelch unite Vol. "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. The seething anger and preoccupation with pain is valid because it's componential to the group's uniquely branded havoc. 3 tick is the dedication to making it a Slipknot album, and not just another flashy alt-metal billboard. But unlike so many, the band's sound rarely disassembles into genre building blocks: riff + glowering vocal + throaty chorus = Ozfest acceptance. 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. 3 shares its lyrical themes of anger, disaffection, and psychosis with most of Slipknot's nu-metal peers. 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. Had they grown fat on their thrones? Probably. Still, after the gothic nausea of 2001's Iowa, Slipknot's vitality dissipated in clouds of gaseous hype and individual indulgence. 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. Slipknot set out to construct the ultimate metal music flamethrower, ever since their genesis in a Des Moines, IA, basement.
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