Slipknot's fourth album brims with all the brutality and desolation that its name implies, playing like a metallic, steel-toed boot to the head. Songs encompass gale-force thrash ("This Cold Black"), bashing groove metal ("Psychosocial") and warp-speed fret pyrotechnics (the title track), yet All Hope Is Gone isn't all uncompromising obliteration. "Snuff" is a gentle ballad that views a relationship's dissolution via the multiple stages of grief, while "Sulfur" finds Corey Taylor reaching into his upper register to impart some hard-fought personal reflections.