Wait and Bleed
by Slipknot
- 186
- BPM
- G major
- Key
- 9B
- Camelot
- 39
- Danceability
- 0
- Acousticness
Slipknot was working on its self-titled debut album in 1999 when the band remixed "Wait and Bleed" to replace the screamed verse vocals with more melodic singing. In that form it came out in July as the lead single.
Joey Jordison wrote the music on his own and showed it to the others at rehearsal. Corey Taylor wrote the lyrics fast in the practice space. Taylor said the song was about the switch in the head that can go at any moment, turning a civilized person into someone capable of terrible acts. Chris Fehn recalled that nobody expected it to be popular. Label staff later suggested writing three more like it. The band refused, saying nothing was written for money or popularity. There are two videos. The first, directed by Thomas Mignone, was filmed during a show on July 31, 1999, at the Ankeny Airfield in Des Moines. The second, the Claymation version, shows all nine members as small dolls in a laboratory, where they drop a jar of insects on the man hunting them.
The song reached number 34 on the Mainstream Rock chart in February 2000 and number 27 in the UK. It won Best Single at the 2000 Kerrang! Awards and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance, which went to Deftones' "Elite".
Wait and Bleed runs at 186 BPM, the tempo of fast punk, speed metal and hardcore. In classical terms it sits in presto territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.29 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 323 ms. It is in G major, Camelot 9B, which shares its notes with E minor and mixes cleanly with C major and D major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.