Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8/10

Regret is such a hard emotion to deal with, especially when passions run deep at the loss of a friend or valued colleague. Things unsaid, half remembered conversations which were taken the wrong way can come back to haunt you and the only way at times to deal with the unhinged sentiment is write about it, no matter how long it takes, Time, in the end, has all the time it needs and for Metal sensations Slipkot, Time perhaps is on their side in their new release .5: The Gray Chapter.

Slipknot have somehow managed to produce an album, that on the face of it, is still a master of its genre, the growling of a bear being poked with a hundred sticks and who knows just how to fight back but who is waiting for the exact right moment in which to strike.

It also has the beautiful introspection afforded by a group of musicians who have lost one of their own in tragic circumstances and another through the ravages of time becoming too much to perhaps withstand.

.5: The Gray Chapter should be perhaps noted for its use of incredible vocals by Corey Taylor who at times comes across as the most dangerous of wounded beasts, snapping, snarling with undisguised hate and bitterness but who combines that seeming singularity with a caress of a velvet glove over a day old inquisitive kitten. Both Beauty and the Beast, the Nuclear Winter and the blossomed spring filled day, the harsh realities of remembrance tinged with the expression of regret and remorse, nobody perhaps can carry this approach off as well as Corey Taylor, nobody arguably would dare attempt it.

With the album being a direct reference to the band’s much missed bassist Paul Gray in 2010, it’s perhaps with no surprise that organised chaos ensues, the commendable cautionary tale being delivered with a sense of grieving still heavy in the air and the dichotomy of responses to loss heaving throughout.

Tracks such as The Devil In I, the brutally assured Skeptic, the superb Lech and The One That Kills The Least are an ideal platform in which saying goodbye makes Time seem more like a passenger at the wheel rather than the one driving us to our own ending and subjective conclusion. If a goodbye is ever needed, if a farewell in which a smile of memory or the dysfunction in unseen departure, then no matter the genre, no matter the type of music being played, then to allow the fan, the band or even the patient listener time in which to say that farewell is worth taking and the healing, no matter how bitter it feels, can begin.

Although the .5: The Gray Chapter doesn’t quite live up to The Subliminal Verses, it should be noted that the album is just as equally important, if not more so, to the future of the group from Iowa, farewells can always be extended and people never really forgotten.         

Ian D. Hall