“Wait and Bleed,” “The Heretic Anthem,” “Duality,” “Psychosocial” — these are, of course, just a few of the biggest songs of Slipknot’s career. They probably will be forevermore.
But even while those tracks have helped make the masked nu-metal favorites a dominant force in the heavy music world for more than a quarter century, their best-known live staples are just part of the Iowa Nine’s incredible legacy.
With that in mind, we asked Revolver readers to pick out what they feel are the most underrated and overlooked but unquestionably killer deep cuts within Slipknot’s towering catalog.
They may not be the songs you’re always going to hear in concert, but they’re no worse because of it. These were the top five vote-getters, ranked accordingly. Dig in.
“Scissors”
We’re going to cut to the chase: A lot of the top vote-getters in this poll ended up being the more epically-sized songs in the Slipknot canon, and this includes their self-titled album’s nearly eight-and-a-half-minute finale, “Scissors.”
There’s an uneasy ebb-and-flow to this one, with the band slithering from slow-sludging nu-grooves towards barely-audible bass-and-whisper ambiance and then on towards a backend meltdown of freakishly untamed blasts, psychedelic-and-psyche-stabbing guitar noise and soul bearing screams from Corey Taylor.
After a 24-year absence from the setlist, Slipknot started slicing and dicing their way through “Scissors” again last year. And it was about damn time.
“The Shape”
“Unstable as always” is a fine way to describe a number of Slipknot classics, even relative underdogs like “The Shape.” It’s a particularly bombastic heavy-hitter from the Iowa era that the band kept offstage for 15 years, but they finally catapulted themselves into its debut performance at the 2016 Knotfest. That said, it’s been nearly a decade since they put it right back in the vault.
Nevertheless, considering how it’s filled to the brim with panic-attack drum fills, rusty-razor riffage and a Barnum & Bailey-adjacent breakdown, it’s truly a remarkable, must-hear monster of a song.
“Gehenna”
This All Hope Is Gone deep cut is steered by an arguably Alice in Chains-ish grunge-gloom riff, but the ‘Knot also intriguingly pepper the piece with haunted house pipe organs and weeping ghost theremins. This all gives “Gehenna” a uniquely straightforward-but-super-eerie feel unlike anything else in their songbook. Per Setlist.fm, it’s also one of the rare songs to have never been performed live by the band, and is seems like Maggoty voters feel this a damn shame.
Free “Gehenna” in concert sometime, Slipknot, because the fans want it.
“Skin Ticket”
“Skin Ticket” is a lean and unsettling late-Iowa curio — its grooves and chugs are often open-string simple, Taylor quivers and croaks through lyrics with tantric uneasiness (“Keeping myself alive”).
Its finale is a noise-fractured fracas that lives up to the “built-in migraine” the frontman sings of earlier in the piece — and that chaos is exactly what compels Revolver followers to keep spinnin’ “Skin Ticket.”
“Gently”
While “Gently” is tucked right in the middle of the platinum-selling disasterpiece that is Iowa, it’s likewise one of the oldest songs in all of Slipknot’s imposing back catalog, dating all the way back to the band’s early era as Meld. (It also appeared on the ‘Knot’s debut album, Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat., as sung by original vocalist Anders Colsefni.) Honestly, that’s just about as deep into the band’s past as you can get.
Built atop an old poem of Clown’s, “Gently” unfurls as a hypnotically slow-building and perversely shoegazing slice of dread before ultimately going out as a nuclear bomb of nu-heavy intensity.
Sadly, Slipknot haven’t played “Gently” live since 2016. Despite topping our poll, the song may well remain in the band’s rearview — that is, unless they wish to retrieve it