Evil walks the boards tonight. For Slipknot, this show is a kind of UK homecoming. That’s not lost on Corey, ghoul-faced master of ceremonies for the evening, and it’s not lost on the legions of stage-diving Slipknot ‘maggots’ either, who roar at every single song, every utterance, every disturbing little twist in the Slipknot dumbshow like groundlings in the Coliseum.
Even if you’ve never had the pleasure of the band on record, Slipknot live are an enthralling proposition. Sure, without the newly-refashioned evil masks, the boiler suits, the three live drummers (two of whom, the Clown and the a Pinocchio-nosed skeleton in a gimp suit, have more in common with Japanese sumo drummers than anything on nodding terms with a hi-hat), and the truly disturbing onstage behaviour, they’re just another extreme metal band – albeit arguably the best in the world – but what makes them unique is their refusal, despite almost hummable new material like current single "Duality", given a first airing here, to be the rock band everyone expects.
Because Slipknot are – defiantly, definitively – not rock’n’roll. Not one of them looks cool in anything like the traditional sense. There are no slinky moves. They aren’t interested in being your heroes, throwing shapes or, you suspect, getting laid after the show. They’re performers in the way that the drummers at a voodoo ritual are performers. They know they aren’t the heroes here – it’s what’s going down that matters. And that’s all happening in the audience.
When the drummers abandon their sets and square-off with each other, snares at the hip, pouring-out military-style tattoos as they advance, the maggots march on the spot. During one menacing mid-section, unbidden, they stop moshing and sit down on the floor, silent, waiting. The chorus brings them leaping to their feet and rushing the stage, wave after wave. It’s highly organized, totally fanatical, and quite frightening. It’s also brilliant.
Slipknot know they’re just backing band for the maggots, creating the soundtrack, the right vibes, the leadership. And, if you’re at a Slipknot show, that, you will come to realize at some point in the evening, you will get involved. So when they take steel baseball bats to their kits, twirling them in the air before landing murderous blows that ring out above the music, your hair stands up, and as a dozen bodies launch into the air and sail, in stroboscope stop-motion, over the heads of the crowd, it’s almost impossible to stay put.
Shorn of the light-and-shade studio production of their superb third album, "Vol.3 – The Subliminal Verses", the band tear into numbers like “Pulse of the Maggots” and “Three Nil” with all the demented joy of a cuckold taking a sledgehammer to his rival’s car.
That’s it. Catharsis. Band members will crouch, mournfully hanging themselves on mimed nooses. They face down the front row, spitting water and hurling objects and abuse. They rock back-and-forth like de facto insanity. And they play music, like "The Blister Exists", of such staggering intensity that it’s capable of conjuring up every single negative emotion, all at once – and facing it all down.
Slipknot won’t get you laid. They won’t make you cool at school. They won’t buy you the respect of your peers or your elders, or anything but withering contempt from 99% of the population. But what they can give you, and what they give every single witness to tonight’s extraordinary spectacle, is something so barmily intense, so wild, so plain enjoyable that it feels a whole lot better than all that other crap.
