A jam-packed 3 Arena played host to the reigning kings of alternative heavy metal, Slipknot, who launched the European leg of their tour promoting their 6th studio album, We Are Not Your Kind. The Iowa group debuted new masks and a new band member, Tortilla Man, following the departure of their long-time percussionist, Chris Fehn, last year.
After an electrifying warm-up by Polish death metal band, Behemoth, the Nine wasted no time in making their presence known opening with WANYK single, ‘Unsainted’. The crowd, most having familiarized themselves with the new material, enthusiastically joined in with its anthemic chorus.
The band alternated between material from WANYK and earlier staple tracks as they launched into ‘Disasterpiece’. After riling up the crowd, frontman, Corey Taylor, who wore a Michael Myers-inspired mask during the evening warmly greeted the crowd with: “One of my all-time favourite cities [Dublin], because I’ve got you f**kers in my blood!” Displaying his incredible ability to spit out lyrics at breathtaking speed, Taylor amped up the atmosphere even more when the band followed up with a live debut of ‘Nero Forte’, which showcased not only Slipknot’s sound but also the band’s willingness to experiment.
With the standing section of the gig now a sea of multiple moshpits and delirious headbanging, Slipknot commenced a brief but brutal period of the gig in which they played some of their heaviest and most aggressive tracks such as Grammy award-winning ‘Before I Forget’, the disturbing ‘New Abortion’, and the in-your-face ‘Psychosocial’. Never one to shy away from humour, Taylor antagonized the riled-up crowd during the brief interval by pointing the mic towards them. “Go on let it out of your system,” he sighed in mock sarcasm. At the resulting cheer, a few scattered laughs were heard throughout the arena when Taylor responded in a manner that could only be expected of him. “I didn’t even tell you what to scream for yet, you crazy shitheads!”
Fans wishing to hear the latest material were not disappointed as Slipknot performed another live debut from WANYK, the juggernaut and thunderous ‘Birth of the Cruel’. If anyone questioned whether there was enough vibrancy in the crowd to join in on the singing, they were quickly disproven when arguably the band’s signature song, ‘Wait and Bleed’, was played. Taylor was so impressed with the decibel level of the crowd that he often, during the chorus, held his mic to them and simply let them spew the words themselves. A real treat was bestowed upon those in attendance when the opening bars of ‘Eyeless’ with its unmistakable percussion and heavily distorted guitar came next. Just before the encore, the iconic opening whisper of ‘Duality’ echoed throughout the arena.
With the end of the gig now well within sight, ‘742617000027’, a static white noise track combined with an endless loop of ‘The whole thing I think is sick’, had the crowd shaking in anticipation of the seizure-inducing ‘(sic)’ and the chug of its guitar-and drum-heavy opening. The rallying cry of ‘You can’t kill me, ‘cause I’m already inside you’ erased any concerns that the audience was tiring. There was to be no appearance of live staple, ‘Spit it Out’, but two other iconic tracks capped the night off; ‘People = Shit’ and, “the new national anthem”, ‘Surfacing’.
Almost 20 years after nine metalheads from rural Iowa instilled nightmares into the minds of rebellious teenagers’ parents, Slipknot showed in the 3 Arena that they are far from being a relic of the past. They are both the elder statesmen of what was then known as ‘nu-metal’ in the late 1990s and leaders in alternative metal. They will surely pick up new fans along the way, perhaps even the children of those rebellious teenagers of the ‘90s.
