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All Hope Is Gone as a whole winds up being as bleak and unforgiving as its title.
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The set is at once Slipknot's most ambitious and accessible outing to date, with a broad palette of sounds and textures that shift faster than Michael Phelps off the starting block.
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Happily, Slipknot can pull in these directions and still maintain a new standard of bone-crunching intensity . There are louder metal bands in the world, for sure, but the Iowan nine-piece continue to make the most noise.
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All Hope Is Gone, reportedly the first thing they've recorded in years without wanting to kill each other, proves that there's still musical unity in disharmony.
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Finding new targets for their thrashing contempt, Slipknot make ugliness sound just a little bit pretty.
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SlipKnot's fifth album finds the nine-piece alternative metal band at an unquestionable creative peak--but the effort may only further alienate some of its diehard, shred-metal fans.
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Metal is supposed to be larger than life, especially in Slipknot’s case, and on this record, their attempt to sound more musically varied has them coming off as tired, apathetic, and above all, weak.
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While it's not without its obvious highlights, All Hope is Gone feels too much like a demo with professional production values to make me recommend it as an album.
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They needed to up their innovating significantly but haven’t, leaving All Hope Is Gone above-average.
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This is dark stuff, but there's excellent musicianship to be found on these heavy meltdowns.
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While their peers pander to the mainstream, the masked musicians continue to honour their scene by staying true to their roots while broadening their sound.
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UncutOccasional, more straightforwardly anthemic moments approach the mawkishness of Nickelback, but Slipknot remain showmen at heart. [Oct 2008, p.108]
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Slipknot stops pummeling every now and then for a few lines of melodic chorus, a full-length dirge, even a power ballad that’s a sort of spurned love song.
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MojoThere's little original in the likes of 'Psychosocial' 'Snuff' or "All Hope is Gone,' but the bludgeoning guitars are crisp, the overload of percussion suitably crunchy and a sense of bravura and commitment that's lacking in many of today's metal bands runs throughout. [Nov 2008, p.118]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 197 out of 252
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Mixed: 39 out of 252
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Negative: 16 out of 252
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Nov 17, 2011
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JeffHOct 7, 2008
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Oct 5, 2019It's a good album with good music, and Psychosocial is good and it's just a very good album, with amazing masks, and good head banging music