Slipknot – All Hope Is Gone
What I enjoy about that album is the poppiness of it. When I listen to 'Psychosocial', it's like listening to a Mariah Carey track. I mean, my girlfriend is a social worker, she doesn't know that much about music, and I'm glad about that. She's no groupie! When she started going out with me, I kept playing 'Psychosocial', and I'd play her other stuff by Slayer and things like that but she never got it. As soon as she heard that Slipknot track she said, "You know what? That's just like a pop song." When my daughter gets married next year, we are having that track as the wedding dance. That whole album though, it just grabbed me, and it really hits hard. The imagery for me is amazing. When you look at that band, and if you're in a room with them, you know it's going to be a heavy situation. Just listening to that album all the way through, Corey Taylor's voice is so great, and then you realise that was the last album that Paul Gray did. When I listen to it now, tied up with the emotion and love for the music, is the thoughts of what the band must have gone through making that record. An album might sound great on the radio or in the record store, but you have no idea about what it's taken the band to get there. Now, listening to All Hope Is Gone and having seen what's gone on for that band, it tells another story to me.