Volume 3 was the album that broke it wide open for the masked men. The band successfully continued its transition from the scream club to regular vocals. Just that small step in the direction of melody led to Volume 3: The Subliminal Versus becoming a classic. More after the jump.

Yes, you or your neighbor may have been 'into' Slipknot prior to Volume 3, but those albums were nothing but two angry swings at success while Subliminal Versus was a full on body slam.   Believe it or not, next year will  mark the ten year anniversary of this high water mark in hard music.  Let's look at some of the tracks.  "Duality", "Vermillion" (1 & 2), and "Before I Forget" were all giant at radio, while still leaving tracks like "The Blister Exisits" and "Pulse Of The Maggots" as huge fan favorites.

The album is a sonic masterpiece and she really be used as a baseline for stereo tests. Usually when you have a variety of distortion based signals (like the guitars and some of the samples on this album) the result is a mix where everything overlaps and blends with each other.   Somehow the engineer on this album was able to take all of the signals from the nine band members and give them each clarity and depth.  I would also go on record as saying this may be one of the best recordings of drums I've every heard.  The clarity and brutality of the skins on "The Blister Exists" is absolutely amazing.

As with the other selections in "The Ultimate Album Collection", I'm not ranking the titles, but saying that no music collection is complete without these albums.

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