Slipknot – Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses) (2004)

October 20, 2024

It’s hard to convey how I felt as a 13 year old, upon first hearing this on release. I’d been in love with Slipknot since Iowa, and had worked backwards through the self titled and MFKR, and through all the various online lore, demos etc. – my disappointment upon hearing Vol 3 wasn’t immediate, though. I knew something wasn’t the same… I just didn’t really have the capacity to explain what. At that age, I was too busy chasing the one girl in my friend group (damn, it was like pass the parcel hahaha) and getting into all sorts of stupid trouble with the police to care that much about what had changed with Slipknot. But Slipknot HAD changed.

Change is obviously not a bad thing. Things have to change. But Vol 3 was such a smoothing of the harsher elements of Slipknot into a more consumable package that the intention was entirely obvious. The first was the infinitely more expensive (and bland) production job. The second, was that there was no swearing on this thing. And you’d think, Ok, that’s not a big deal, but Slipknot were a band that very casually dropped curses all over their songs. They claimed it was some shit about maturing their writing, but along with the huge poppy choruses and blander production, it was very obvious to me why Slipknot had stopped swearing in their songs.

Don’t get me wrong, I still loved this thing and in an era before reliable internet (56KB gang where you at!?) or before I had an iPod I carried thing around with me everywhere until I got totally sick of it. But even then, as a dickhead 13 year old with a line shaved out of my eyebrow, I knew the magic with Slipknot was over. Obviously, I was totally wrong and this album blew them up to even more success, but I was finished.