We Are Not Your Kind

Slipknot make an unexpected impact with their newly-discovered tenderness, but it’s those instantly-recognisable throat-shredding roars that really shine.

Wonderfully cohesive hour of vein-popping indignation. [Sep 2019, p.82]

With their latest studio album, Slipknot have released one of the strongest albums in their career. When it comes to We Are Not Your Kind, Slipknot live up to the title.

The album is a tad long, but the diversity in sounds and use of ambient noise make it clear this is to be listened to from beginning to end. There are plenty of single-worthy songs for casual listeners, while offering dedicated fans a more fulfilling experience by pacing the record's heavy moments.

20 years since their debut, Slipknot are as bold, fearless and exhilarating as ever.

We Are Not Your Kind is an astonishing record, a roaring, horrifying delve into the guts of the band’s revulsion, a primal scream of endlessly inventive extreme metal and searing misanthropy.

For better or for worse, Kind is a Slipknot record, one that has more to offer than expected and is still sometimes frustratingly short-sighted.

We Are Not Your Kind marks a supremely confident reassertion of their capacity to pulverise. [Sep 2019, p.116]

With all of the band’s nu-metal hallmarks at the forefront this time, We Are Not Your Kind sounds the more like the head-turning, self-titled debut they put out 20 years ago than any of their releases since. But what’s different here is a new sense of (gasp!) sophistication.

This is grounded, back to basics writing that becomes the breath of fresh air for the album. This is the record the band should have come back with post Paul Gray’s death; it has all the hallmarks of what made Slipknot great in the first place, but it contains a lot of the good elements that came from .5: The Gray Chapter as well.

Overall, it’s an album designed to thrill and perhaps tentatively expand their fanbase, while the fiercely synth-rocking Solway Firth duly raises a middle finger to everybody else.

The sheer ambition on We Are Not Your Kind is just as staggering. ... This may be one of the band’s most personal records, but the rage they capture is universally felt.