It’s like a youth club disco set in hell. Fourteen-year-old kids are dressed in [a]Slipknot[/a] boiler suits, homemade [a]Slipknot[/a] masks and [a]Slipknot[/a] combat pants, and are currently ready to explode. [a]Slipknot[/a]’s nine masked marauders arrive onstage to air-raid sirens and strobe lighting, and are met by an ocean of devil signs and terrace chanting. The pig, the clown, the Pinocchio dude and all their torture garden mates are out for blood from the off.
They may play AC/DC‘s ‘For Those About To Rock’ as an intro tape, but [a]Slipknot[/a] are quickly becoming the Y2K Kiss. They’ve got an insanely devoted fanbase, who wear their uniforms, paint their faces and present a sizeable merchandising opportunity, and they’ve also got a bunch of ropy old tunes that sound like the Devil’s disco through a huge PA system.
The music’s actually passable enough – a modern mix of sports metal riffery (natch), hardcore punk and radio-friendly choruses. While songs like the jagged insanity of ‘Scissors’ and ‘Purity’ can’t help but impress through their brutality alone, the tunes are merely a means to an end. [a]Slipknot[/a] on record are nothing to this crazy, hilarious, tripped-out rock circus. The drums are on fire, the clown is apparently wiping a freshly-worn sanitary towel across his face and the pig is pissing on Pinocchio. Oh yes.
It’s [a]Slipknot[/a]’s animal nihilism that sets them apart from nu-metal wimps like Coal Chamber. Tonight’s performance is the slapstick show of the century. Their grotesque, comic madness that speaks to the frustrated teenage dork in us all – it’s the Revenge Of The Nerds, not the whinings of a millionaire rock star. Not for [a]Slipknot[/a] the jock-rock idiot fanbase that listened to Bryan Adams before Limp Bizkit came along and turned heavy rock into a field sport. This lot would be at home masturbating to horror comics during the football season.
Bizkit boss Fred Durst even comes in for a righteous pummelling from leatherfaced frontman Corey Taylor. He rails against Durst‘s big-shorted, homogenised rap metal dream, screaming: “Fred doesn’t speak for us – he’s a fucking sell out.” Us against them, fuck the man, it’s the manifesto of confrontation. [a]Slipknot[/a] started off as the heavy metal Insane Clown Posse but now they’re building their own new cult. And their mission is to poison us all.