Photo: Aaron Sammut

Waiting in line tonight it becomes apparent how incredibly popular Slipknot are. There’s plenty of time to hone this social hypothesis, as the line of rabid fans at the gate is huge. The soundtrack to my ponderings is Sydonia, the Melbourne four-piece. The band’s industrial rock sound manages to carry over the fence and from what I hear is energetic and vibrant as the band’s live show always is. By the time most of the punters manage to get through the doors, San Francisco’s Machine Head are just taking the stage. There’s something about this band that speaks directly to the alpha-males in tonight’s capacity crowd. While us beanpoles, rakes and weeds hang back and pensively watch on, our burly brethren tear down to the pit and release their inner Cro-Magnon. Machine Head are the perfect soundtrack to this behaviour, Rob Flynn’s screams sound monumentally pissed off and Phil Demmel’s lead guitar is loud and crunchy. If the eyebrow-pierced and barbed-wire-arm-band-tattooed among us went to war, they’d do it to Machine Head. Also, props must go out to vocalist Flynn for conjugating “circle pit” as a verb.

Before the curtain has dropped on the Riverstage, the crowd has already surged to the pit for chance to witness the nine. When Slipknot do come out, they make a spectacle. With a massive stage show, all the moving drum risers and pyrotechnics cannot divert the attention away from the amazing musicianship of the core band members. As a vocalist, Corey Taylor makes no concession to his aggression, despite the crowd knowing all the words. Everyone singing along to tracks like Before I Forget and Dead Memories fail to drown out the roar of Taylor. Tonight we see a band that achieves primarily on a musical level, whose stage antics and gimmicky appeal only add another layer to an amazing live show.

TOM HERSEY

^{CHECK OUT MORE PHOTOS FROM THE SLIPKNOT SHOW HERE}

Comments (3)

3. Written by LIAM, on 14-11-2008 20:05 Gonna go, gonna die

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