Yes, Slipknot, the biggest new band of 1999. The most intense band ever. The most important album since Korn. The sickest band in the history of music. Enough with the bullshit culled from Kerrang!, time to give Old Man Reality another wake-up call...

Slipknot are in fact being catupulted onto The Alternative Bandwagon full force by those nice people at Roadrunner Records (Publicity Dept.) - the same label that produces dirivitive, generic, unoriginal trash at an astounding rate. The last time any Roadrunner band showed inginuity was Sepultura back in 1996 on their Roots opus. The rest, especially Coal Chamber, Machine Head, Fear Factory and the sans-Max Cavelera Sepultura (to name but a few) are huge examples of this.

But for Slipknot, none of these complaints would be heard, as they would get so much PR it would be on the scale of a Tony Blair election campaign - they even soundbite conveniently enough.

The band itself get attention at first for their image. They all have numbers (0-8, yep, all 9 of them) and wear identical boiler suits, as well as various masks, including gas masks, hockey masks and ones as modelled by The Gimp in Pulp Fiction, with a diver's helmet and bushido mask inbetween, as well as Adidas trainers. Isn't this a marketing man's dream? They could sell boiler suits, official branded masks, have them play at little kid's parties...

Now, their music. Or, to be more accurate: noise. There is no scope in there. Crashing guitars and drums with hints from the DJ and keyboards, with vocals that always follow one pattern: quiet, seethe, roar, seethe, roar etc. etc. ad nauseum. But wait a minute, do they need all 9 members? In a syllable, NO.

Out of the lineup, 2 do absolutly nothing-banging a beer keg on stage or running about doesn't not a legitimate musician make (S1Ws aren't counted as members of Public Enemy, so why should they?), and you don't need both a DJ and someone doing samples/keyboards. Sampling the track in the studio and adding it has been done for years. And to be frank, the only reason they have 2 guitarists is so they'd be louder live-they play the same thing-not a fine example of good musicianship either. So that takes them down to a conventional 5-piece in the space of a few seconds reasoning and the ability to utilise one's brain. Unfortunatly that seems to be a dying trend these days, but I'll save that for another time.

And of course they quote so well. A T-shirt reads 'People=Shit' (too tempting) - which they brag is the biggest selling piece of merchandising of the whole company's catelog (the rest consisting of Machine Head, Coal Chamber et al t-shirts), vocalist Corey Taylor (aka 8), also calling himself 'The Sickness' (purr-leese) says 'We crave total insanity', guitarist Mick Thompson (aka 7) claims 'I'd rather suck cock than wear Adidas sneakers', as well as their 'shocking' apparance on Howard Stern's show (DJ Sid Wilson - 0 - beat off in one corner, someone else took a dump in a bin). Shock sells once more. Jane's Addiction said it nearly 15 years ago, Nothing's Shocking, everything is only done for publicity and attention. Anyway, the original Metal Hammer review said they 'play it safe instead of going for something truly disturbing', before the blitz dictated they must be pronounced Messiah.

All these aspects led to Slipknot becoming the second biggest selling debut in Roadrunner's history. Nothing to do with the fact that Machine Head's Burn My Eyes (AKA #1 Biggest Seller) and Coal Chamber are the only other ones with production values behind them (anyone heard the earliest Sepultura stuff?), and catuplting into the UK Top 40 album chart with no radioplay. A lot of hype, though. Since their image was pasted all over the alternative music press boyband style to go with the hype tidal wave, many must have been intregued and bought out of curiosity. Whether or not they still listen to the album afterwards is another matter entirely - that isn't involved in moneymaking. Rumors that the band was a supergroup of members of Incubus, Machine Head (them again), Limp Bizkit and so on also helped fuel the fire, and keep the Cash Cow coming in for a little bit longer. Strategically scheduled tour dates also kept the sales healthy.

The reason given for the image by Taylor is that, since they all knew each other and had been in various bands before, they should all wear masks so people wouldn't know who they were. Only this theory only counts in Des Moins, no-one else could give a Mile-High Club about them otherwise, it's not even the same timezone as the ballpark inhabited by the likes of Soulfly, Foo Fighters or Methods of Mayhem. And the idea was done by Mr. Bungle first. Only Mr. Bungle do noise in an avant-garde way (just unlistenable), not a 'We'll nick bits of Korn, Machine Head, Slayer, Sepultura and Fear Factory with hints of Death Metal and brief Hip-Hop breaks and pass it off as our own' kind of noise.

Strange that most of the bands in that statement are on Roadrunner, isn't it? Anyway, why am I getting so bothered - the bubble will burst when the second album gets recorded, since Ross Robinson (the other main hook I missed) is off producing someone else. And why do all his production jobs sound so similar after Korn? Moo-ching!!!

PS-there is a reason The Bloodhound Gang do a dance routine in Slipknot gear, y'know? Just hammering that point in.