Slipknot did something special in creating their fourth studio album: they went home. Preparation for All Hope Is Gone began in 2007 and the recording process began in early 2008 at the Sound Farm Studio in Iowa, marking the first major label album from Slipknot to be recorded in their home state.

And it sounds like home.

All Hope Is Gone is a shadowy, down-to-earth record with twisting melodies, some unexpectedly light tones, and a great equilibrium of radiance and gloom. It is their most melodious and most sonically-pleasing album to date and represents a shift in a new direction without abandoning the crunching turmoil that the maggots adore.

Producer Dave Fortman was brought in to help prepare the sound and give it some density. Best known for his work on Evanescence’s Fallen, Fortman loaned his ear for layering to the band and the final result certainly benefits from it.

According to reports, all nine members of Slipknot were involved in the writing process. Vocalist Corey Taylor told MTV via podcast that the process was not without its conflict, but that Slipknot’s music always contains elements of conflict.

With All Hope Is Gone, the album gains its clarity through the palpable divergence. Some songs are unequivocally disordered, with percussion slipping in and out where it doesn’t belong like a stroppy youngster, while other songs are extraordinarily elegiac and almost resemble ballads.

All Hope Is Gone comes born out of a throng of sound that includes a smidge of Spiro Agnew (“.Execute.”) and quickly storms into the mammoth breadth of “Gematria (The Killing Name)” with a rattle of drums and some killer guitar. The pace is swift, the pounding is remorseless, and Slipknot holds back on the strain just long enough to incite madness.

The thrash elements are here, but there is more of a sonic spotlessness to them. The wall of guitars takes over and crushes the listener into capitulation, while the drums pummel away on whatever’s left. It’s sanitization by inferno, a ripening assault for the senses that isn’t afraid of covering new earth.

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