Wait and Bleed

Wait and Bleed was the first single from Slipknot's debut album, released in July 1999. The band remixed it to replace the screamed verse vocals with melodic singing. Jordison said he wrote the music on his own, showed it at rehearsal, and that Taylor wrote the lyrics very fast in the practice space. Taylor described the song as being about the switch in your head that can go at any moment. It peaked at number 34 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in February 2000 and at number 27 on the UK Singles Chart.

The song earned the band a first Grammy nomination, for Best Metal Performance at the 2001 awards, losing to Deftones' Elite. It won Best Single at the 2000 Kerrang! Awards, and VH1 placed it 36th on its list of the greatest metal songs. The first video, directed by Thomas Mignone, shows a live performance filmed on 31 July 1999 at the Ankeny Airfield. A second, animated video, known as the Claymation version, shows the nine members as small doll-like figures. A Loudwire comparison of the band's catalog with tour statistics ranks it among the four most played Slipknot songs on stage.