Slipknot - Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. (1996)
Haha its initials are MFKR! Like "motherfucker"! Don't tell my mom that: It's her favorite album!!
Before Slipknot was Slipknot, they were Slipknot, but a different kind of Slipknot. A Slipknot that passionately worshipped Mr. Bungle and funk music in general, and they went by the name Slipknot, much like Slipknot proceeded to do in later years under the Slipknot brand.
In fact, there's only six members (but seven in the promotional photos?!) on this album as opposed to the average, pitifully small amount of nine. In fact, not even vocalist Corey Taylor was on this album, but rather, Anders Colsefni, whose harsh vocals sound a bit like Max Cavalera's.
In "Slipknot", which is, yes, a song named after the band that was interestingly enough reworked for Slipknot's self-titled under the reworked title "(Sic)", vocalist Anders Colsefni keeps yelling "BONEGNAWERS SUCK!!" at one point, but it sounds like "BONERS SUCK!!" and that's a little bit funny, right?! No?! What about the part in "Do Nothing/Bitchslap" where it turns into an audible Mr. Bungle fellatio session? That was funny, right?!
A good portion of this album sounds like random shit they threw together to try to make the other members go "hyuck hyuck hyuck" in the studio.. And then their pissed off producer was tired of these guys being drunken assholes and edited the joke songs into the serious songs without telling them!! At least, that's what I can only ASSUME happened, but to their credit, their "look how whacky this is xDD dude.. can you imagine if we put THAT in a song??" portions of songs are actually kinda fun!
Vocalist Anders Colsefni, in this album's version of "Gently", actually sounds a fair bit like Corey Taylor at some points! And even stranger, he has a distinct James Hetfield flavor in "Confessions"! That along with his rapping in "Only One", which was also redone later by the band (WHO HAD THA SICCEST VERSE?? ANDERS COLESLAW OR COREY "HARDCORE-Y" TAYLOR??), really shows he was a fairly versatile vocalist, and it makes me wonder just where their career could've gone if he had stayed their vocalist, and perhaps if they expanded on the funk themes further in their music.
Oh yeah, let's talk about that: The FUNK. Bassist Paul Gray (R.I.P.) plays some pretty sick shit all throughout this album, which makes me wonder why they didn't further utilize that on their other albums, making him damn near inaudible underneath the guitars! Now THAT'S a tragedy, because Paul Gray could play some pretty nice grooves.
The album's consistency is a bit odd, because unlike Mr. Bungle (their obvious musical heroes for this album), they don't seem to be able to pace the songs together on the tracklist very well, and makes the entire thing feel disjointed, almost like a collection of songs that they can use as their musical resume for chances to get hired in different bands. Hopefully they don't show them "Killers Are Quiet", though, because despite a few cool moments in the song, it's mostly 20 minutes of them sitting around with their thumbs up their asses.
So what if the album essentially plays out like a highlight reel of your mallgoth friend's teenage years upon discovering Mike Patton? I'd still pay at least three million dollars to see them play this live. Where do I have three million dollars from? YOU SEE THAT LITTLE AD UNDER THIS POST?!
7/10
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