Slipknot

Slipknot
24 May 2004
The Astoria, London

Whilst surfing the Mean Fiddler site three days prior to this gig I spotted the tickets on sale and Johan and I made a quick decision to take up the opportunity to see Slipknot at, what for them, is a small venue. Unsurprisingly a photo pass was impossible to come by, though they obviously gave a lot out as there was a real scrum in the pit, so the photos with the review are from my mini camera.

As was to be expected, the tickets went on sale too late for them to be posted out and we were horrified to discover not one but two queues. One passing by the Mean Fiddler entrance for ticket collection and a second queue snaking all the way round Soho Square to actually get in. Hence the decision to sit out the queue in Garlic & Shots wasn`t a hard one.

As a result, by the time we were actually entering the venue we could hear My Ruin finishing their set. Vocalist Tairrie B has quite a reputation in the press, but as it turned out she couldn`t have been nicer when we found her in the Keith Moon bar happily meeting and greeting fans and posing for photos.

Still, we could have timed things better and had another reasonably priced beer before entering as we still had about an hour to wait in a sweltering Astoria for Slipknot to appear. The arrival too was a drawn out affair with first a whole blue grass song played before the actual intro tape started.

Eventually all 9 members appeared and blasted into (SIC). Blasted being the word as the sound was an abysmal barrage of noise throughout, save for the menacing Iowa.

I hadn`t expected much in the way of a stage show as for one this was a one-off low key gig and secondly I had read that Slipknot had wanted to strip down the presentation. This was the case, right down to the band appearing to be using nothing more sophisticated than the venue lighting rig.

To say there were nine people on stage it didn`t look crowded. Back centre was Joey Joridson on his drum riser, then in front of him to his right was Craig Jones and his sampling system, to Jordison`s left was Sid Wilson`s turntables. In front of each of them was the custom percussion of Chris Fehn and Shawn Crahan with the rest of the band occupying the centre space.

This was my first Slipknot experience and I was surprised at how static most of the band were. Corey Taylor seemed to spend the entire set stage centre with one foot planted firmly on the monitors, with guitarists Jim Root, Mick Thompson and bassist Paul Gray mostly with feet tight together bowing forward in the style many nu-metal bands appear to adopt. The action was left to percussionists Chris Fehn & especially Shawn Crahan, the clown. Mostly this involved climbing on top of their drums and headbanging. Crahan appeared with a baseball bat to bray the hell out of a beer keg at one point, meanwhile Fehn was often sat on top of his kit wanking his Pinocchio nose!

A selection of material from new album Volume 3 (The Subliminal Verses) was aired, though the appalling sound made it difficult to judge them. Wisely Slipknot picked a good selection of the crowd pleasing songs from their previous two albums with the songs with sing-a-long chorus` going down best as at least they provided an anchor to work out where they were in the song. People=Shit and The Heretic Anthem were two particular examples of this.

Iowa provided a brief respite with just Fehn in the spot light sat on his kit beating out the slow rhythm. Johan had been waiting for his favourite Wait & Bleed but the two of us spent the song looking puzzled at each other as we could hardly make it out the sound was so cluttered

Maybe I`m missing something as there seemed to be a lot of happy kids leaving the venue and I`ve read some glowing reports of the gig. Maybe it is because it has taken so long for me to get round to seeing the band that I had built up the idea of something dangerous and edgy, but to be fair it is just nine guys in funny masks and that`s what we got!

Slipknot songs played not in correct order:
(SIC) / The Blister Exists / Eyeless / Three Nil / Duality / Left Behind / Disasterpiece / Purity / Pulse Of The Maggots / The Heretic Anthem / Iowa / Wait & Bleed / Spit It Out / Surfacing