‘Welcome to Day Two in a series that I like to call: Slipknot completely fucking destroys the Hammersmith Apollo.’Corey Taylor spits these words out with a calm knowingness, grinning beneath his trademark mask just before the crowd go crazy as Before I Forget’s mammoth riff fires up. But let’s pause there for a moment, and go back…
Quite a few years ago on the tour of their self-titled debut, Slipknot came to London and raised the Astoria to the ground. This legendary show included a crowd of hardcore fans going all out, the band themselves going equally spastic, and one of the members leaping from the upper balcony into the audience below. Crazy stuff, huh? That’s just traditional Slipknot, and the main question is would any of the shows of the three-night run at Hammersmith be even half as extreme as that? The answer is straight off a ‘no, of bloody course not’; and that’s from the instant tickets went on sale. But tonight was still spasmodically mental enough to warrant five tonnes of horse tranquiliser.
The support on this tour is strong: we have the Finnish Children of Bodom up first, and while their songs are complete rubbish, they’re much tighter than most other bands I’ve seen in that genre. Really though, the songs are terrible.
‘Machine fucking Head! Machine fucking Head!’ Oh, shut the fuck up. The fans are so annoyingly dumb it aggravates me to a point of a very slight thirst for their blood. Robb Flynn’s entrance onto the stage alone is pretentious enough to compare to the Queen’s own fucking outing at Buckingham Palace. But is has to be said: they warrant this all by blowing the shit out of us. Some great songs are aired tonight, and inbetween all the skin-flaking riffs there are moments of tasteful quiet, two-part vocal harmonies accompanied by a clean guitar… before exploding back into the riffs, of course. And the crowd are wild. The mosh actually spans almost the entire width of the Apollo at one point. And as Davidian rings out like a shotgun blast, you have to give it to Machine Head: they’re actually pretty fucking good, albeit arrogant knobs.
Will it be Gematria? Will it be (Sic)? Hell, maybe even The Blister Exists? These are possible openers for the ‘Knot I have rolling around my head, and I can’t decide on one. The lights down, a foreboding playback intro, and we’re at the moment of truth. As the disquieting guitar line for Surfacing pierces the ears, I know at that second Slipknot’s just going to keep us on our toes all night.
There is no time to breathe. No time to even comprehend it all. The band, in all their masked, dark, sadistic, fucked-up glory keep hitting us with fantastic song after fantastic, ear-bludgeoning song. These are in the form of Eeyore, Before I Forget, Disasterpiece and a truly skull-shattering performance of Eyeless. It’s great to hear a group who’ve been doing this for roughly ten years now, still put in the same amount of passion and conviction into their live set as before. You can sense some irritation, however: Chris Fehn, one of the three percussionists, has some costume troubles, and Clown has to help pull off a stage invader later in the show. Aesthetically, their stage set-up is akin to some sort of twisted playground in the 22nd century, an industrial circus for all mutated post-apocalyptic persons to gather. Sid Wilson hangs mid-air onto a rotating drumset (like a bored monkey at times, it has to be said), Paul Gray is constantly frequenting the ramps at the back with his rumbling bass tones, Craig Jones is minding his own business on the turntables. The nine-piece never look crowded onstage, which is some kind of miracle really.
Psychosocial is a sonic leviathan tonight: unfortunately I miss most of the action as I am just coming back from outside: I almost fainted / vomited with excitation / exhaustion. That and Dead Memories are the only two tracks aired from the latest album, luckily. I want to hear the good stuff.
Double-bass beast The Heretic Anthem and one-off Prosthetics are next, both sounding massive, before we get to the real reason eight-thousand people converged to Hammersmith Apollo tonight. ‘This is the part where you go down in history. And I mean go down in history.’ This is the band’s trademark live song Spit It Out, and when it falsely climaxes at the middle-eight, at Corey’s mark, near enough the entire standing area are crouch down to the floor, like a mass prayer towards the
mecca of Slipknot. Roughly three-thousand crowd members ‘jump the fuck up’ in unison for the song’s freak-out; it’s like a friggin’ ocean of mosh. This is proof Corey and Co. really push the boat out live.Classic Duality and the more obscure Only One close proceedings, before the encore of People=Shit and an outrageously nuts (Sic) knock us off our feet one more time. But do we really need any more convincing? No, but it’s good just to make sure.
This is the best sound I’ve ever heard for a metal band. In fact, the great mix is true for both Children of Bodom and Machine Head. So kudos to the sound guys, but also to the band: Jim Root’s unconventional choice of a telecaster gives the tracks a taut, refined roar, and when blended with Mick Thompson’s unyielding chugathon style of playing makes for a fantastic wall of heaviness. Also, Taylor’s vocals just keep getting better, and Joey Jordinson – he is the source of phatness in the band, no doubt about it. When he smashes those toms, the sound is akin to the building falling down around you, regardless of his novelty move of zero-gravity drumkits spinning round like a fucking catherine wheel.
I had been looking forward to this occasion for years. Literally, years. And now it has come and gone, do I feel disappointed at all? No: here’s a band who live up to the hype (despite the ridiculous stage antics and bizarre visuals). Now comes the agonising wait for the next tour... The way my ears rung after the gig is reason enough to wait.
Overall - 9 / 10
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