Slipknot is bolstering its acclaimed self-titled 1999 debut album as part of a massive 25th anniversary reissue that will arrive Sept. 5 through Roadrunner. The first taste of the project is a previously unreleased demo of “Prosthetics,” which the masked, Iowa-reared hard rock band put to tape before album sessions with longtine producer Ross Robinson.
Among the different editions of Slipknot (25th Anniversary Edition) are a six-LP box with “blood-spattered” vinyl and two-LP and two-CD formats. All will feature a host of never-before-heard material, including outtakes, alternate versions and different mixes, while the vinyl set boasts previously unreleased live recordings from Hartford, Ct., in 1999 and Iowa and the U.K, the following year.
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Also included are early rough mixes from Indigo Ranch in Malibu, Ca., made prior to Robinson’s eventual final mix, plus pre-Robinson demos and two unused text mixes of the album from engineers Jay Baumgardner and Ulrich Wild.
Virtual unknowns from Des Moines before their second-stage stint on the 1999 Ozzfest tour, Slipknot upended the hard rock world with its squalling mix of machine-gun guitar missives, three-drummer tribal wallop and otherworldly sample manipulation. Lyrically, the band took aim at a litany of perceived betrayers, oppressors, and trash-talkers with a spirit of righteous, cold indignation, although moments of well-wrought imagery and repulsively rich humor were woven into the apoplectic noise.
On stage, the band’s conceptual underpinnings were taken to extremes, including smashing a goat’s heart, heat-induced vomiting and singer/former welder Shawn Crahan partially severing a finger while showering the audience with sparks from an angle-grinder. Most striking were the masks—grim rubber visages ranging from a leering pig face to a deranged clown to an exhumed Rasta corpse. The band said it wore them to put the focus on their music and not on their personalities, which is why they also sported matching prison-style coveralls and identified themselves by numbers instead of names.
Slipknot showcased material from the debut on its recently wrapped Here Comes the Pain world tour. The group’s latest studio album, The End, So Far, became its sixth top-two entry on the Billboard 200 in 2022.
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