Slipknot’s Gray Chapter album is so underrated. I think it’s the most consistent front-to-back listen within their recent discography. From what I’ve seen, fans seemed to feel pretty meh about it and, to my surprise, a lot of fans seem to prefer We Are Not Your Kind over it.
spontaneous review
I personally didn’t really enjoy WANYK. The songwriting felt messy, the vocal melodies were weak, and overall the tone felt inconsistent. So many people were making comparisons to IOWA and that it was return to form, and while I agree that some of the riff styles were very reminiscent of something you’d hear out of IOWA, those moments were few and far between. In terms of actual song writing, I think the songs from each album are worlds apart.
I’d argue that Gray Chapter is MORE reminiscent of their earlier works, namely their self-titled. There are a few tracks that use a lot of weird screeching sound effects and turntable sounds that sound like a callback to tracks like “Surfacing” or “Prosthetics”. It’s not 1:1 “it sounds exactly like this song” kind of thing, but rather the consistent and deliberate incorporation of these elements. And there are definitely riffs too that when listened to you can pick up traces of their old riff style.
From a song writing perspective the writing sounds really tight, from song structures having good flows, there being a good mix of heavy songs and some “poppier” tracks, and even the tone of album sounds like the band had a clear vision for it when writing. This album was written in memory of their bassist who had passed away around this time, and it sounds that way tonally. It’s certainly not their heaviest album, but I think it’s their second darkest album behind IOWA. I like to describe it as if SLIPKNOT and All Hope is Gone had a baby.
It’s definitely not perfect. The general consensus seems to be that 14 tracks was a lot for this album, and I agree that they could’ve trimmed the weaker tracks to get it down to like 12 or 11 tracks. I’d personally rank this at my 4th fav Slipknot album right behind Vol. 3.