Slipknot kicked off their Knotfest Australia tour in Melbourne yesterday, minus founding member Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan due to a family emergency.
Frontman Corey Taylor revealed the news early in the band’s headlining set at Flemington Racecourse. “He told us to tell you guys that he will be back down here as soon as he can. I’m sure you will all keep him and his family in your thoughts and prayers.”
It is unlikely Clown will join Slipknot for the rest of the tour, particularly Sunday’s second leg in Brisbane.
Clown’s absense might have contributed to a bit of a lack of typical on-stage theatrics during Slipknot’s set yesterday. Despite an impressive synced-up light show, their main set was largely without the smoke cannons or flames used by many other bands earlier in the day. There was also a couple of short segments of DJ noise, an interesting filler given the band were announced to do a longer set earlier in the week.
The band were still well on-song and delivered a career-spanning collection of hits, opening with “(sic)” and “People = Shit”, and playing “Gematria (The Killing Name)” from their 2008 album All Hope Is Gone live for their first time. They closed their main set with one of their biggest hits “Duality” before returning with an encore of “Spit It Out”, “Surfacing” and “Scissors”. Other big tracks included in the set included “Wait And Bleed”, “The Devil In I” and “Psychosocial”.
A Day To Remember warmed up the masses for Slipknot with a super-tight set, which included three confetti showers. Their second-last track was the acoustic-driven “If It Means A Lot To You”, which frontman Jeremy McKinnon declared was likely to be “the softest song to ever be played before a Slipknot show”.
Earlier in the day, Slaughter To Prevail proved to be huge crowd favourites as the Russian death metallers unleashed with a brutal set. It was paused for about 10 minutes due to an incident in the crowd with paramedics called in to remove an injured fan.
Hatebreed were popular in the early afternoon, with the band bringing out a massive “ball of death” which made its way throughout the crowd. And junior Slipknot, aka Vended, led by Corey Taylor’s son Griffin, provided a healthy dose of nu-metal and plenty of syncronised head-banging and hair-flicking for those who arrived early.
The two Australian bands on the bill also well-and-truly held their own, with Byron Bay’s In Hearts Wake bringing plenty of energy earlier in the day, including some on-stage interpretive dancers. Polaris‘ Jamie Hails also jumped on stage for guest vocals during “Goldringer”, before he and his band delivered a commanding set in the late afternoon. It began with a massive burst of black streamers for opening track “Nightmare”, and also included a crowd-singalong with lyrics bursting on the screens for mega-hit “The Remedy”.
Knotfest Australia continues in Brisbane at the Brisbane Showgrounds on Sunday, before its final leg in Sydney at Centennial Park next Saturday 8th March. A huge collection of sideshows are also happening along the east coast and in Adelaide throughout next week.
