Psychosocial

Don’t be scared, everyone. It’s just heavy metal!

The Grammy Award Winning heavy metal band Slipknot released one of their biggest hits, Psychosocial, in July of 2008. Psychosocial is, in my opinion as well as the opinion of many die hard Slipknot fans (aka “maggots”), one of the band’s best songs. To me, it is unfortunate that music like this doesn’t get more attention from the mainstream. I’ve never been able to determine what it is, but something about heavy metal scares many people away, and Psychosocial does the same with a great many people.

Psychosocial is a song that I can personally relate to. One of the main themes of the song is social anxiety, something I have struggled with for my whole life. This song has always been a favorite of mine for many reasons, but the relation to social anxiety is one of the most prevalent.

Psychosocial slows down the tempo to bludgeon with a steady, pounding groove instead of an all-out thrash commonly found in a number of Slipknot songs, which is reminiscent of the band’s more slow burning, but still malicious second album Iowa. The song is capped off with a time-signature shattering guitar and drum breakdown that will leave even the best air instrumentalists stumped. This is actually fairly erroneous, because while the instruments do display syncopation, the time-signature remains 4/4 throughout the entire track.

Vocalist Corey Taylor displays multiple aspects of his vocal ability in this song. The chorus contains his clean, melodic singing, which may sound like a stark contrast given that the song is heavy metal. However, his clean vocals fit in very well with the rest of the song. The verses contain a combination of his rapping ability, his growling, and his raspy screaming. The vocal style in the verses displays themes of hostility and rebellion. They also show very clearly the influences that Motley Crue, Slayer, and Iron Maiden have on Taylor. In contrast, the chorus shows the influences that Pearl Jam, Black Sabbath, and Def Leppard have on him.

Drummer Joey Jordinson and guitarist Jim Root are two of the biggest stars of this song, in my opinion. Jordinson’s drums in this song are heavy and explosive and help the song’s beat along a great deal. Root’s ability to hold the powerful rhythm on guitar is second to none, which makes the guitar riff in Psychosocial my all-time favorite.