"Wait and Bleed" is the debut single by American heavy metal band Slipknot, released as the lead single from their 1999 self-titled debut album. After being remixed to replace the screamed vocals in the verses with more melodic singing, it was released as the lead single from the album in July 1999, and peaked at No. 34 on Billboards Mainstream Rock chart in February 2000. It remains one of the band's most popular songs.
Joey Jordison recalled in an interview with Kerrang!: "I wrote the music for 'Wait and Bleed' on my own⦠I showed it to the guys at rehearsal, and then Corey wrote some lyrics really fast in our practice space⦠He took us to a new level immediately."
Musically, "Wait and Bleed" has been described as "a nu-metal rumble that careens around like a particularly violent bout of bumper cars, between rough vocal yelps, a furious tempo, and riffage."
"The song's about that switch in your head that can go at any moment," noted Corey Taylor. "You go from being a civilized human being to someone who can commit terrible acts. I've always been fascinated by the fact we represent ourselves as civilized when, at any moment, we can become animals."
According to Ultimate Guitar, "Wait and Bleed" is about a man who keeps having repetitive black and white dreams about laying in a bathtub full of his own blood with his wrists slit. One day he wakes up and sees that his dream has become a reality, but he doesn't want to believe it and he tries to fall back asleep again.
"Wait and Bleed" earned Slipknot a first Grammy nomination in 2001 for Best Metal Performance, though it lost to Deftones' "Elite". The song won the Best Single award at the 2000 Kerrang! Awards. The song enjoyed a degree of commercial success, reaching No. 34 on the Mainstream Rock chart and No. 27 in the UK Singles Chart. It was also ranked No. 36 on VH1's "40 Greatest Metal Songs" list in 2006. In 2017, Annie Zaleski of Spin named it the eleventh best nu metal track of all time.
In 2020, Kerrang and Louder Sound ranked the song number four and number one, respectively, on their lists of the greatest Slipknot songs.
There are two videos for "Wait and Bleed". The first, directed by Thomas Mignone, features a live performance of the song, filmed during a performance on July 31, 1999, at the Ankeny Airfield in the band's hometown of Des Moines. The second, known as the "Claymation version", depicts all nine members as small, animated, doll-like creatures inside a laboratory inhabited by a man who is attempting to catch them. Eventually, the band cause the man to fall and be stung by dropping a jar of insects. As the band looks over the man, Chris Fehn's doll covers him in fuel and Shawn Crahan's doll sets him alight, killing him.
All songs credited to Slipknot.