"Duality" is Slipknot's biggest, most recognizable song. And since the Iowa Nine are among the most popular bands in metal history, that means "Duality" is its very own pillar in heavy-music's greater architecture.
By 2004, Slipknot had already proven themselves as master welders of apoplectic heaviness and stadium-rousing catchiness, but the lead single from Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses) was their most realized song yet, a cut that could simultaneously soundtrack the animalistic destruction of a quaint home by unruly metalheads (as pictured in its landmark music video) but also rocket to No. 5 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart.
Here are five little-known and surprising facts about one of the 21st century's defining metal anthems.
1. The lyric "I push my fingers into my eyes" doesn't describe as an act of self-harm — quite to the contrary, in fact
The opening line to "Duality" is iconic as they come, an instant signal for Maggots at Slipknot live shows to scream in excitement at one of their favorite songs and start singing along. But if you thought the lyric described an act of eye-gouging self-immolation as a means to "stops the ache" of existence — like some kind of nu-metal update on Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" — well, think again. As Corey Taylor explained in 2013, the meaning is much more benign.
"I wanted to put something together that represented the yin and yang of the human spirit, the light sides and really dark sides or people's personalities," he said of the song. "Sometimes the struggle to balance those two sides really drive you mad. It's right in that line, 'I push my fingers into my eyes.' That's the moment you put your thumb and middle finger against the base of your nose to relieve that pressure. It's about taking a deep breath and keeping on fighting."
2. Even Corey Taylor's ex-wife misconstrued the "fingers into my eyes" lyric
Again, you're not alone if "Duality"'s opening line paints a gristly picture in your mind. As Taylor recalled in a 2011 interview, even his wife of nearly 10 years, Stephanie Luby, misinterpreted the vivid line
"I was doing an interview about the song 'Duality' for the book Chicken Soup for the Soul, and I was trying to explain the lyric," the Slipknot singer said. "It's about the push and pull between people, struggling with the dark side and trying to promote the good. The chorus goes, 'I push my fingers into my eyes/It's the only thing that slowly stops the ache,' and it's about that headache you get at times of stress, like a migraine — and by taking your fingers and putting them right by your eyes and pushing, you can make the pain stop.
"But my wife overheard, and she was like, 'Wow, that wasn't where I thought you were going with that.' She thought I was taking my thumbs and pushing them right into my eyes, with blood pouring out. I was like, 'Honey, you're terrifying me.' That's a little brutal."
3. Taylor specifically challenged himself not to use profanity in the lyrics to "Duality"
With songs like "Surfacing" ("Fuck it all! Fuck this world!/Fuck everything that you stand for!") and "People = Shit," Slipknot had established themselves as masters of the well-placed curse word by the time they were making Vol. 3. But all the profanity had also served to typecast the band — particularly, Taylor, their lead singer and main lyricist.
"I was catching so much hell," he recalled in 2020. "Whether it was Slipknot or Stone Sour ... 'Oh, he can't truly be a great writer because he can't write without using expletives!' and whatnot."
So what did Taylor do? He swore off swear words altogether when writing the lyrics to the Knot's third album. And he did pretty damn good: The closest thing to profanity on the album are the word "bastards" in the intro monologue to "Pulse of the Maggots" and "bitched" in "Duality."
"I was, like, 'Oh, really? OK...'" Taylor said. "So I did that whole album specifically for that. To me, it was a bigger 'Fuck you' to write a whole album without saying [expletives] ... I was pretty proud of that."
4. "Duality" feels so heavy and relentless in part because it features a form of "structural acceleration"
"It's got one of the heaviest grooves we ever came up with," OG Slipknot drummer and major songwriter Joey Jordison hyped up "Duality" shortly before the single's release. And it's true. "Duality" isn't necessarily one of the band's heaviest songs, overall — the chorus is almost poppy, and the verses are almost quiet compared to most of the group's output — but it does have a special way of working listeners into a frenzy.
According to Music Theory & Cognition PhD Stephen Hudson, this is largely due to the structure of the song in which "the length of each riff gets shorter throughout the verse/chorus cycle." This riff order creates "a kind of structural acceleration that builds relentlessly towards the chorus," he explained in an article titled "Why Is Slipknot So Heavy? Structural Acceleration in Slipknot's 'Duality.'"
"That relentless acceleration throughout 'Duality' is part of is why this song is so heavy," Hudson concludes. "Through structural acceleration and then a double-breakdown, it invites you to reach a zenith and then ascend beyond it, surpassing your own maximal efforts." Indeed.
5. The house destroyed in the instant-classic "Duality" music video was not actually supposed to be destroyed
Even if — somehow — you don't love the song "Duality," you probably love its music video. The visceral, violent clip was directed by Tony Petrossian and filmed in Slipknot's hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, about 10 minutes from Jordison's house.
"A band like us is really grassroots, everything that's happened for us was born there," Jordison said in an interview with MTV at the time. "We wanted a video that showed the integrity of the band and the relationship with the fans. There's no special effects — there were kids falling through ceilings, flying through glass, jumping off roofs."
Needlessly to say, there was a few casualties: Two Maggots ended up getting minor cuts from broken glass and two other fans were taken away after smashing up a rented Ford Taurus with baseball bats. But the biggest casualty was the house in which the main action was set. That got utterly annihilated.
"[My] understanding was that the people who owned the house uses it as an income property, so they were going to remodel anyway," guitarist James Root told Metal Injection after the fact. "To what extent, I don't know, but they're definitely going to be remodeling now!"
Truth be told, the fans on hand has been directed to act wild, but not totally wreck the premises. However, after Slipknot DJ and resident wildest man Sid Wilson broke a window, all hell broke loose. Ultimately, Slipknot's label Roadrunner Records had to foot a $50,000 bill for the unplanned damages. Worth it? We think so.
