All Hope Is Gone is the record where Slipknot stopped being the loudest band in their corner and became, briefly, the biggest. Their fourth studio album, released in 2008, produced by Dave Fortman, and the first Slipknot record to debut at number one on the Billboard 200. For a masked nine-piece from Des Moines who built their name on being too much for the mainstream, arriving at the top of the chart was its own kind of joke landing.

The album does what you expect for most of its runtime: heavy, fast, percussion stacked on percussion, Corey Taylor screaming over the top. It is a band at full strength doing the thing they are best at. But it does not end the way it begins. The last stretch of the record loosens its grip, and one song near the close steps so far outside the band’s blueprint that it barely sounds like the same record. Worth getting to the end for.