“Left Behind” by Slipknot

"Left Behind" was the first single from Iowa, Slipknot's second album, in 2001, and it's the closest thing that bruising record has to a breather. It began as "Lust Disease", an old number the band had been kicking around since before their debut, and Corey Taylor says they tore it apart and rebuilt it because they wanted some melody on the album, while its darkness still let it sit comfortably next to everything else.

Ross Robinson produced with the band, Mike Fraser engineered and Andy Wallace mixed, and Taylor and his bandmates share the writing credit. Kerrang! heard it as a brief respite from the sheer nastiness surrounding it; it's still a pummeling, with the drums and guitars grinding away under Taylor's snarl-to-howl chorus. It earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance in 2002.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.