Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.
| Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. | ||||
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| Demo album by Slipknot | ||||
| Released | October 31, 1996 | |||
| Recorded | December 1995 – March 1996 | |||
| Studio | SR Audio, Des Moines, Iowa | |||
| Length | 51:03 | |||
| Label | -ismist | |||
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| Slipknot chronology | ||||
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| AllMusic |    |
Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. is the first release by American metal band Slipknot. Released originally on October 31, 1996, it was limited to production of 1,000 copies. The band originally self-distributed some of these copies, but went on to release the remaining units through -ismist Recordings in 1997. Due to its limited release, the album has become much sought by fans since Slipknot's rise in fame.
Despite considering it their first album upon release, the band now considers Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. to be a demo and have evolved and released the majority of the songs on future releases, albeit usually in radically altered forms. It was recorded in Des Moines, Iowa, over a period of four months. The music of the album contains many influences including funk, jazz, and disco which weren't as apparent in later material. Many of the lyrics and the album's title are derived from the role playing game Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The songs contain an "emphasis on non-traditional songwriting" and melodic themes more than subsequent releases.
In late 1995 Slipknot and producer Sean McMahon entered SR Audio, a studio in the band's home town of Des Moines, Iowa to work on what they intended to be their debut album. Retrospectively McMahon said that the band was "driven" because they spent the majority of their time in the studio for the four months it took to produce the album. Slipknot self-financed the production, which came to an estimated $40,000. The band expressed how much of a learning process this time was with it being the first time they had recorded their music, specifically the additional percussion elements were challenging to capture.
The band were aiming for a tribal sound but encountered problems including minuscule timing errors and during this period they refined their percussive sound, they experimented with erecting walls to isolate the drums and re-arranging parts. In February 1996 during the mixing process, guitarist Donnie Steele decided to leave the band for religious reasons, as a result Craig Jones joined the band to fill the spot. However the band realized that they were incorporating too many samples on their recordings and could not produce these sounds live. In order to solve this problem Jones moved to full-time sampler and Mick Thomson joined as a guitarist.Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. was released on October 31, 1996 with a release party at The Safari, a local club where the band played a lot of their earliest gigs.
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