Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
This year Slipknot had announced plans to take Knotfest on the road this summer for a six week long North American Tour. The tour, appropriately named Knotfest Roadshow, features a packed lineup with metal titans from four different countries, Coppehangan’s very own Volbeat, French metal giants Gojira and Poland’s extreme black metal band Behemoth, and of coarse the United States very own Slipknot.
With their new album, “We Are Not Your Kind” reaching No.1 on the Billboard charts this month, Slipknot headlined one of the most anticipated tours this summer. It was on Wednesday August 28th at Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater where the day would see light showers early on and threats of thunderstorms throughout Long Island and other parts of New York that made for a very skeptical outcome for fans with fears of the show having to be cancelled. On Wednesday Mother Nature sided with the Maggots and the venue took to their social media pages and gave a thumbs up, confirming that the show will indeed go on as scheduled, and urged concert goers to bring their rain gear. Slipknot, who hadn’t played Jones Beach since 2016 when they toured with Marilyn Manson, who coincidentally was rained out last year when the Twins Of Evil Tour made its stop at Jones beach, needless to say that Slipknot were determined to not let their fans down because of uncontrollable circumstances.
With an early show time of 5:30 on a weekday, it would seem by the empty spaces in the parking lot and the size of the crowd inside the venue that a lot of fans were still making the treck out to the beach from probably work while the festivities got started. Never the less Behemoth lead by Adam “Nergal” Darski blazed the stage in a thick clouds of haze with bursts of fire shooting off at the rear of the stage,
while “Wolves ov Siberia” kicked off the bands short yet well rounded, other songs included in their bone crushing set were “Daimonos”, “Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer”, “Bartzabel”, “Conquer All”, Sabbath Matter” and ending their set with the classic track “Chant for Eschaton 2000”.
French metal giants Gojira hit the stage early on in the evening as well, as the crowd continued to thicken, Gojira relentlessly annihilated song after song from start-to-end of their setlist. “Toxic Garbage Island” set it off as the bodies began to fly nonstop across the across the top of the crowd and over the barricade.
Cryo-cannons blasted off onstage throughout the performance, replacing the band’s usual heavy use of fire, which as you all should remember lead guitarist Christian Andreu was caught by a blast fire in the face do to the winds at Sonic Temple Fest earlier this year. Heavy smoke engulfed the stage along with bright colored streams of light that cut through as frontman Joe Duplantier and band crushed their half hour with fury, including such fan favorites as “Stranded”, “The Cell” “Silvera”, Cryo-cannons blasted off onstage throughout the performance, replacing the band’s usual heavy use of fire, which as you all should remember lead guitarist Christian Andreu was caught by a blast fire in the face do to the winds at Sonic Temple Fest earlier this year.
With the tide of the ocean rising prior to Volbeat taking the stage, from the front of the stage through the entire floor of General Admission had everyones feet soaked, but to no real alarm the show would continue on. Volbeat in front of Slipknot as direct support. Volbeat would take the stage to Motorhead‘s “Born To Raise Hell” before kicking off their 12 song set with “The Devil’s Bleeding Crown”, followed by “Lola Montez”. As the Poulsen delivered a verse of Johnny Cashs’ “Ring of Fire” that lead to the intro, which he explained to be the true inspiration behind “Sad Man’s Tongue”. The band would truly get fans sparked as they teased a bit of Slayer’s “Raining Blood”, as Poulsen was quick to say “You wish” before heading into the Slayer influenced track “Slaytan”. The band continued their knocking out their set with “Dead But Rising” before leading into a “A Warrior’s Call” / “I Only Want to Be With You” before getting back to the bands new material with “Last Day Under The Sun” and going right into the heavier “Pelvis On Fire”. The band even invited a few younger fans up on stage to help them close out their set with the fan fav “Still Counting”.
It was 9 p.m., the time everyone at Jones Beach had been waiting for. As a giant black curtain covered the front of the stage with a massive red and white Slipknot logo on the front of it and thousands of maggots eagerly awaited the curtain to fall, others could be seen taking selfies of themselves with the massive Slipknot logo dawning their background. With AC/DC‘s “For Those About To Rock” played over the house PA system fans knew the timing was getting closer. It was 9:15 as opening intro “(515)” played through the main PA, as the giant curtain was thrusted upwards into a tube up in rafters high above the stage, “People = Shit” kicked off the set, sending the entire crowd at Jones beach into an massive frenzy with numerous mosh pits breaking out in all over the General Admission section, and a nonstop roaring of cheers from the entire venue of a near 15,000 hungry maggots. Slipknot came out that night dressed in the newer white outfits, which they first revealed on the third date of the tour in Auburn, WA. The set continued with “(sic)” and “Get This” keeping the maggots hungry for more.
As Corey Taylor greeted the fans by saying, “What the fuck is going on out there, Jones Beach?, “The soggiest fucking place in New York state, as always we could have set our fucking watch to the fact that it was going to dump on you, but god damnit that means that only the craziest motherfuckers in all of New York state are in this fucking place tonight!!!” As fans roared back agreeing with Taylor. “Let’s see what the fuck you got on this,” yelled Taylor as the Heavenly sounding choir kicks off the bands debut hit single off We Are Not Your Kind “Unsainted”. “Before I Forget” which is off of Slipknot‘s Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) helped lead the way to the bands second single off We Are Not Your Kind, “Solway Firth”.
With a new tour comes a new stage production, Slipknot’s new stage production is off the hook for this tour. With tons of red hot pyro blast, the new stage show also see’s new percussion sets for both Shawn “Clown” Crahan and the newest member Tortilla Man. Don’t worry they still have the traditional beer kegs that are now joined by kits wrapped in LED panels to match the entire layout of the stage that is filled with giant LED panels all over it that flash in sync with all the visuals through out the show. Also new to the stage set is a treadmill of sorts that stretched across the upper level of the stage riser which was mostly used by DJ Sid Wilson who grooved his way around on it in front of drummer Jay Weinberg and the cryptic Craig “133” Jones who provides the band’s signature eerie sounding samples. While others like, guitarist Mick Thomson and Jim Root, bassist Alessandro Venturella, and lead frontman Corey Taylor stayed rooted to the floor of the stage, as Slipknot burned through their set, smashing out hits like “The Heretic Anthem”, “Psychosocial,” “The Devil in I”, and a few others before coming to one of the shows biggest highlights, the addition of “Wait and Bleed” to the bands setlist. Now of coarse no Slipknot show would be complete without the title track of the bands debut album “Spit It Out”, which as usual was saved for the encore, with Clown coming to the front of the stage handing off a camera to Taylor who used it to video capture the audience while yelling out “lets get good look at you crazy mother fuckers, turn those lights up, get your fucking hands in the air”, as Taylor spanned across the crowd they were projected up on the giant LED panels, Taylor then handed the camera back off to Clown who continued filming the crowd during the song’s “jump the fuck up” climax. As the clock neared the hard curfew of 11 p.m., the band couldn’t yet be rushed off without performing the classic “Surfacing”, which would end their fiery set as Slipknot poured the final can of gas on the blaze they had set to Jones Beach.
Behemoth:
Gojira:
Volbeat:
Slipknot:
