Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

They say choose a side but sometimes the side they want you select is wrong, your gut tells you so, your brain agrees and so you can only line up with those who are frowned upon by certain sections of society, place two fingers up to derision and the raised eyebrow of hate and sit back comfortably in the knowledge that might is a dead concept, what matters is what is right in your heart, that you can say proudly, We Are Not Your Kind.

Thank heavens for Slipknot, for in the midst of the feeling as if the world is unravelling quicker than a carousel attached to a giant woollen jumper, there is still rage and decently proposed anger that cuts through the sideshow invented by mediocrity and the sought after political spin and allows it to bleed, to weep in misery. For We Are Not Your Kind should be a  rallying call to the decent, to the disposed by government, the minority without a voice and those that just want to see the world as place where hope and love flourish, where dictatorship and demeaning trolls all meet the same satisfying end.

Slipknot’s latest album may not have that one song that rises above anything else, that captures the zeitgeist in a dramatic unnerving fashion, however what it does have aside beautiful conviction, unbreakable consistency, firmness across the whole album and for that We Are Not Your Kind speaks of revolution, of rebellion against the expected, and opens the door to arguably the band’s greatest recording yet.

Across songs such as Birth Of The Cruel, Death Because Of Death, Critical Darling, A Liar’s Funeral, Spiders and Not Long For This World, Slipknot are visceral in their observation, thoughtful in their determination to provide compelling arguments, and angry, pure head on heated and animated with contempt for those that would poison the well and ask us to drink from it for the exchange of pounds, shillings and pence.

If Slipknot have never been better then it is because of the furious nature of lack of control on the side of right, that the seekers of enlightenment have not been able to overthrow the cowardly and the craven yet but the time is coming, the urge to shout back is growing louder, and it is about time. We Are Not Your Kind feeds into this rejection of the consumable, of the undesired rising up with all common decency behind them, no matter the creed, colour, orientation or gender, We Are Not Your Kind speaks for all against the tiny and insignificant.

Ian D. Hall