Opening on a barrage on tumbling electronic noise and piano melodies, PRELUDE 3.0, shows just how far Slipknot have come since their first album.

THE BLISTER EXISTS, on the other hand has its sound firmly rooted in the past, lacking the subtlety of the opening track and replacing it with pile driving speed metal guitar riffs and the kind of thundering militaristic drum sound that you can only get when you've got two drummers, and two amazing drummers at that. The guitar riffs that open,

DUALITY is the sound of the band taking everything they know and distilling it into a near perfect slice of modern heavy metal. The guitars pump and grind with muscular precision as they contort their syncopated riffs over the thundering drum beats while Corey Taylor delivers his most melodically catchy vocal performance yet, without descending into mindless pop-metal.
While the idea of Slipknot doing an acoustic ballad may seem ridiculous, that's exactly what you get with.

VERMILLION has a Faith No More edge to it as discordant piano melodies compete with heavy guitar riffs and frequent time changes. That Corey's vocals are aping Mike Pattons throughout, also adds to the feeling that this could almost have been a lost song from Angel Dust.

Closing much as they started, DANGER - KEEP AWAY, is another collage of dark electonica and piano chords that tumble around against Corey Taylor's melodic vocals. With a definite Radiohead influence, this has the same dark electronica running through it that Kid A and Amnesiac did.

Formed during 1995 in Des Moines, Idaho, Slipknot recorded and released their debut album, MATE. FEED. KILL. REPEAT in 1996. The visual side of the band has been just as important as the musical side, right from the beginning - with each band member wearing coveralls and masks while performing live and on photo shoots, and in the beginning not even giving their names simply going by the numbers 0, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8.
Slipknot signed to Roadrunner Records through Ross Robinsons I AM RECORDS imprint in 1997, and recorded the album, SLIPKNOT at Indigo Ranch Studios, LA with Robinson in the same year. Songs like SIC and WAIT AND BLEED and relentless touring saw the band go from cult heroes to headline shows and radio and MTV rotation.
The bands next album, IOWA, debuted in the charts at number three in 2001.

Following a break, during which various members worked on side projects such as Murderdolls, Stone Sour and The Rejects, Slipknot finally began work on their new album in 2003, recording with Rick Rubin in LA. VOL.3: (THE SUBLIMINAL VERSES), was realised in early 2004 and saw the band once again playing the summers Ozzfest as well as trying off a new range of masks.