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<\/p>\nBy Christopher David<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m gonna go ahead and stir up some shit,\u201d Corey Taylor said about halfway through Slipknot\u2019s set at the Taxslayer Center on Sunday night.\u00a0 \u201cAnd tell you that you\u2019ll be hearing some new Slipknot music within the next month or so.\u201d\u00a0 The already rabid crowd responded with deafening approval as the band launched into \u201cThe Chapeltown Rag,\u201d last summer\u2019s single teaser of what\u2019s to come for The Nine.<\/p>\n
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Slipknot, on a seemingly endless tour cycle, are at the top of their game, and the argument could certainly be made that they\u2019re the best metal band out there at the moment.\u00a0 From crushing opener \u201cDisasterpiece\u201d (one of Iowa<\/em>\u2019s standout tracks) all the way to a pulverizing finish of \u201cPeople=Shit\u201d (a timely anthem if ever there was one) and \u201cSurfacing,\u201d the band dug deep for a setlist with some surprising twists and turns, most notably dwelling on 2009\u2019s All Hope is Gone<\/em>.\u00a0 The rarely performed \u201cDead Memories,\u201d arguably the \u2018knot\u2019s most accessible single, came across beautifully, and the soaring chorus of \u201cSulfur\u201d and melancholia of \u201cSnuff\u201d were enough to suggest perhaps the band needs to revisit All Hope<\/em> more often.<\/p>\n But back to \u201cChapeltown.\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps the best distillation of everything that makes Slipknot who they are, the band\u2019s most recent outing almost over-promises what we can expect from the next Slipknot album.\u00a0 Taylor\u2019s throat-shredding, repetitive wails of \u201cI\u2019m afraid\u201d as the song careens toward a dirge-y end from a hooky bounce of a chorus and punishing verses that appear to dabble in a Jack-the-Ripper era indictment of online culture (\u201ceverything is God online \/ and it\u2019s as evil as it gets\u201d; \u201cscandalous know-it-all feedback chamber, nobody wants the truth\u201d).\u00a0 The sum of the parts is all things Slipknot, and the tune wouldn\u2019t have been entirely out of place on 2001\u2019s Iowa<\/em>, the band\u2019s watershed moment and the standard to which its (often unfairly) held even more than twenty years later.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, we\u2019re nearing the end of the tour, and my throat is kinda fucked up. To which you might say, \u2018Corey, you sound like that anyway,\u2019\u201d Taylor joked near the start of the night, but you never would have known it as his signature snarl tackled the nastiest parts of the anthemic \u201cAll Out Life\u201d and came through just fine through the more melodic moments in the set like \u201cUnsainted\u201d and \u201cVermilion.\u201d\u00a0 Not to undersell the rest of the gang; as a unit, the band isn\u2019t often given enough credit for making an eight-piece aural assault work as well as they do, and guitarists Jim Root and Mick Thomson remain one of the best two-guitar attacks out there.<\/p>\n Slipknot have become the reigning kings of mainstream metal, and few bands before them have held the line as firmly in terms of sound, image, performance, and an insistence on doing things their way, and if their recent work and Sunday\u2019s performance are any barometer, their best years may well be in front of them.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Slipnot-Knotfest-Moline-06-05-22-18-1024x683.jpg\")
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