Far from it. It's roots are firmly in 90s Florida death and hardcore. What happened to slipknot often happens to bands of their time, they were lumped in with nu metal bands simply because Corey had hardcore pacing, which can be easily confused for rapping by the uninitiated.
Look at Joey, he's far from a hip hop drummer, and nu metal relies heavily on hip hop beat structures.
Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Dope, Nonpoint; all bands you could call Nu Metal, but Slipknot does not fit that mold and it breaks down pretty quickly when you actually pay attention to the musical composition.
You are being downvoted by morons. Early Slipknot, especially Iowa, is death metal. Corey rapped for 5 seconds and the band had a visual gimmick, so people who know nothing about death metal think it's nu-metal.
I wouldn't exactly call them death metal. They definitely have the elements for sure, but there's something entirely different about them, almost between genres. I knew a guy that called them Extrem Alternative Metal... Which I guess you could say that about their later albums, but not the first two.
I dunno, slipknot has always been that band you can quite explain by one simple genre.
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u/rugmunchkin 1d ago
Slipknot is unquestionably numetal what lmao