At the turn of the New Millennium, no band in metal were more hyped, discussed or debated than Slipknot. Their 1999 self-titled debut album had turned them from nine angry, young, masked oddities from Iowa causing a hoo-ha on the Ozzfest’s second stage into chart-bothering, global curiosities, with world domination tantalisingly within their reach.
Most bands in their position, aware of their own superstar potential, would have made a conscious choice to tone things down, shave off as many rough edges as possible and just generally make everything a bit more palatable for a mainstream audience on their make-or-break second album. Slipknot were not most bands; rather than suck up, they doubled down, opening new album Iowa with a song even more ferocious and extreme than anything that they had put their name to before. Unbelievably, it helped make them even bigger.
