All Hope is Gone (2008)

Is it possible to dress up like a Halloween creep and still rail against social injustice? Slipknot pull it off on their new album All Hope Is Gone, which is a metal assault-and-battery on the hypocrisies of the modern world. ''The state of the nation...a broken promise is as good as a lie,'' Corey Taylor barks in his best Cookie Monster voice on the title track, and asks, ''What if God doesn't care?'' on the anti-organized-religion rant ''Gematria,'' as drummer Joey Jordison pounds double-bass patterns to wake the undead. This is dark stuff, but there's excellent musicianship to be found on these heavy meltdowns. B+
DOWNLOAD THIS: Listen to the ''Sulfur'' and the rest of the album at AOLMusic