Track Listing

1. (515)
2. People = Shit
3. Disasterpiece
4. My Plague
5. Everything Ends
6. The Heretic Anthem
7. Gently
8. Left Behind
9. The Shape
10. I Am Hated
11. Skin Ticket
12. New Abortion
13. Metabolic
14. Iowa

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11571 in Music
• Brand: SLIPKNOT
• Released on: 2001-08-28
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Explicit Lyrics
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Album Description
Japanese pressing of the panty wearing Nu-Metal acts 2001 studio album includes one bonus track, 'Liberate (Live)'. 15 tracks in all.

Amazon.com
Right from the introductory shriek and grind of "(515)," you know Slipknot are deadly serious about making a real heavy metal album. Iowa is intimidating in its unforgiving heaviness. Produced to perfection by wunderkind Ross Robinson, it takes the best of Slayer as a starting point. "People = Shit," "The Heretic Anthem," and "New Abortion" are relentless and wholly brutal, but this is no mere thrash. "Disasterpiece" features a weird, hypnotic riff, while "Left Behind" comes across like a duet between Alice in Chains' Layne Staley and Slayer's Tom Araya. The rerecorded "Gently" builds slowly from industrial atmospherics to a punishing explosion of noise. The title track (also old and formerly known as "Killers Are Quiet") is a deeply unsettling heavy-metal "Midnight Rambler." Frontman Corey Taylor claims to have performed it naked and bleeding from self-inflicted wounds, which isn't hard to believe. This masterfully constructed collection is painfully raw and utterly compelling. --Dominic Wills

Customer Reviews

IOWA
Slipknot's second major label debut is one of the most anticipated modern & extreme metal releases of the year & an important step foward for the band who exploded onto the heavy music scene in 1999, following their rare & independant mate, feed, kill, repeat album, with the brutal, complex & aggressive assault of their self titled LP. Iowa treads similar ground to the debut, though it is undoubtably heavier, faster & thrashier then the first album, while losing the minimal hip-hop influence present on the debut, & still incorporating a strong sense of melody. the guitaring is an improvement from the debut & the brilliant double bass onslaught & blast beats from drummer Joey Jordison once again has helped established him as one of the world's best drumming talents. Corey's vocals are again a standout with the diversity & aggression of his vocals shining through & dripping with conviction, that some anti-slipknot fans have claimed he doesn't possess. Corey is also assisted with some impressive backing vocals from the two percussionists. Scratches & samples add an eerie & subtle atmosphere to the music though they are not incorporated on this album as much as they were on the debut. The production is again first class from Ross Robinson, with the help of the slipknot crew. In my opinion the best tracks are People=S**t, Disasterpiece, New Abortion, Heretic Anthem, I am Hated & The shape. Left Behind displays good use of melody while the remakes of Gently & the 15 minute long atmospheric album closer Iowa are also impressive. The only song that hasn't as yet grabbed my attention is Everything Ends. Overall an awesome follow-up to the debut LP, with slipknot's death metal influences more prominant then ever without allowing the band to be classed as purely Death metal. Check out lamb of God, Soilent Green, Acid Bath & Australian metal bands Alchemist, Damaged & Blood Duster.

as intense and relentless as anything I've ever heard
Way back in the Eighties, there were several metal albums so astounding they remain personal favourites to this day: Metallica's Master Of Puppets, Iron Maiden's Live After Death, Slayer's Reign In Blood, and Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime, to name a few. Heavy music has changed so much these days that singing merely about Samuel Taylor Coleridge, H.P. Lovecraft, Reaganomics, and old reliable Satan himself sounds sorely out of date. What's left to sing about is nothing but a load of whiny introspective tripe, but with their phenomenal debut, and their new album Iowa, Slipknot prove they are the true masters of
cashing in on their own misery.

Slipknot have this teen angst thing nailed down...as Bart Simpson once said, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. They're not idiots. Today's Gen-Y Global Teens have pop lolitas and boy groups for the kids, cheeky 'punk' bands for future frat boys, boring trance music for the ravers, sophomoric rap for the suburbanite gangstas, and yes, doom rock for the bottom-of-the-barrel misfits, all carefully marketed and packaged. What sets Slipknot above boring white-boy metal rappers and cartoony acts like Mudvayne and Gwar is their absolute, undeniable conviction and tight metal musicianship.

Iowa would be half the album it is if it were not for the efforts of Ross Robinson and Andy Wallace (Wallace mixed Slayer's classic Reign In Blood). The duo are able to combine powerful vocals, two guitars, an extraordinary drummer, a bassist, two percussionists, and two samplers, creating such a monolithic sonic wall of hell, making it, bar none, the greatest-sounding metal album I have ever heard, and I've heard a lot of them.

Although the use of the ubiquitous eff-werd is repeated ad infinitum, vocalist Corey Taylor shows some creative growth on Iowa. 'My Plague', 'Heretic Anthem', 'Metabolic', and the searing 'I Am Hated' show that he's capable of more than nonsensical bellyaching. Slipknot's incredible musical chops are evident on songs like the frantic 'People=S**t' and 'Disasterpiece'. The album's epic title track is a bit of a departure, and is equally thrilling and disturbing, a kind of nu-metal blues jam that lasts a good fifteen minutes.

Like their debut cd, Slipknot are again guilty of not knowing when to quit. Iowa is ten or fifteen minutes too long; 'Left Behind', while possessing amazing production, is an obvious single stuck in to get some radio airplay and sell more units, and 'Skin Ticket' says nothing that Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral didn't say seven years ago. Something with such extreme content should be shortened... that's what makes something like the 28-minute Reign In Blood so memorable.

Though not as explosive as the previous album, Iowa is a terrific piece of work. I'm simply amazed at the intensity. However, I'm worried that some poor, misguided kid somewhere will misinterpret the lyrics and take out his or her frustrations the wrong way. I've always been against musical censorship, but any parent out there who hears this music coming from their kid's bedroom should make sure the kid has his or her head screwed on straight. For every ten kids who dig this album for its visceral power, there will always be one who'll take it all a bit too seriously. The other day I put on Iron Maiden's The Number Of The Beast, and found myself longing for the days when metal bands sang about the old Prisoner tv show, Native Americans, and the Book of Revelations. It all seems so harmless now.

It's not just a Tac-Nuke, it's another way to say I Hate You
The 20th Century was, not so long ago, the most violent in human history.

Man it doesn't take much to get upstaged.

The 21st Century is like some great blood-soaked gut-spattered gory canvas of Satan, and a real work of art it is: Genocide in all its viscera-spattered glory stomping red-toothed & hungry across the Sudan & despoiling Rwanda; the annihilation by 747 of two of America's most iconic skyscrapers; constant headhacking, decapitation, & the development of Suicide Bombing as one Religion's single contribution to culture; riots, looting, burning, raping, maiming to say nothing of the lesser Lights of Violence like typhoons, twisters, earthquakes, and even a hurricane that devoured a major American city while everybody just watched.

Man it's been a doozy, hasn't it? Who needs monsters when we have Mankind?

In this world full of idiots, I'm grateful that I have a band like Slipknot. I'm glad I can spin a brutal little brass-knuckles headcrusher of a CD like Iowa, which is great music to listen to when you want to crush people and break things. When you're tired of idiots on the highway driving in the passing lane at 45 mph, creating a rolling roadblock---the same idiots who scream down leafy & narrow suburban streets at 90 mph or tailgating you within inches of your back bumper when you have nowhere to go.

You with me?

It's great music to just let rampage through your ears, your guts, your windows, when you're sick of the vomit our so-called "Leaders" spew, vomit that passes as wisdom, vomit that assures us we should fret & worry about what terrorist savages think about us, that we should be ready at every instant to bow & scrape & apologize.

It's for those moments when some hideous mainstream sub-normal twists up his face and says "why do you have to be so weird?". It's for everybody who ever said "you're never gonna make it", for every chick who ever shot you down because she was gunning for the QB, who now sells used cars and comes home to the little hovel they call a home, gunning his grungy little Geo through the stoplights.

It's for those days that are Red in Tooth & Claw, when the Rage just spills over and you need something to serve as a soundtrack for fury.

That's "Iowa".

JSG