Forget about tying the knot, this group have slipped the knot! It’s Scuzz Sunday time!

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Good evening to you, I’m Jacob Braybrooke and it’s time for your weekly throwback to the emo, punk and rock scene of old, as Scuzz Sunday is here! Slipknot’s “Before I Forget” is a landmark Heavy Metal track that I still often hear in bars and clubs, even sometimes on the radio, to the present day! It was originally released as a single off their third studio album – titled “Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses)”, released in 2004. The album was released after a long period of writer’s block between the members of the band, who later decided to incorporate a more traditional style of songwriting, with melodic song structures and heavy guitar riffs, along with the experimentation of using acoustic guitars. Wouldn’t you know it, the album was a massive hit! It received multiple awards, including several awards for “Before I Forget” as a single from the likes of the Grammy’s, where it won “Best Metal Performance”. The band are still highly popular to this day, with their latest LP release “We Are Not Your Kind” reaching #1 in the UK Albums Chart. I saw frontman Corey Taylor appear on an episode of BBC 2’s “QI” as well and he’s actually a very charming and articulate guy. Enough of my natter, let’s revisit “Before I Forget” in all it’s glory with the video below.

1 second in, a thumping guitar line threads along a melodic bass riff before Taylor shouts “Go” and we officially have lift-off on the mosh-pit activating, definitively masculine vocal sensibilities and fierce drumming chords, all of which are performed at a brisk pace, to a hard rock tune that sounds oddly accessible to people who have maybe never heard anything from the band before. The signature vocal line goes: “I am a world before I am a man/I was a creature before I could stand/I will remember before I forget”, which has been produced over a revved-up tempo and a chorus that shifts along with the ethereal tone of the no-nonsense lyricism, which – in turn, gels with the Halloween Monster aesthetics of the band’s masked (and numbered band member) imagery. There’s a little bit of artistry to their costumes and I feel their art work has been produced with a nice helping of attention to detail, even if it’s not very far off the Viking aesthetics of Eurovision legends Lordi, functioning as a somewhat “Polar Opposite” to the symphonic ballad style of the Finnish icons. Overall, I think the quality of the track still holds up, it was never really my style in all honesty, but I can appreciate the impact it had on re-positioning the Metal genre to a hungry audience thirsted of it. I think it’s just like Pop, but with heavy chords – as a chanting chorus line and the accessibility of the track lends itself well to the culture that it’s catering for. I like the band for what they were doing and although I wouldn’t choose to listen to a whole album from them, it’s a perfectly acceptable track which holds up.

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Thank you for reading this post! I hope you enjoyed it and don’t forget that I’ll be back tomorrow, as usual, with an in-depth look at a track from a fresh singer-songwriter from South London whose video for tomorrow’s track was directed by critically-acclaimed British rapper Loyle Carner (I really dig him) and his brother, Ryan Carner! She was also considered for the BBC’s Sound Of 2020 award! If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when each new post is up and like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime