Slipknot

support Papa Roach + Helmet
author PP date 14/06/05 venue KB Hallen, Copenhagen, DEN

When do you know you've just walked into a mainstream gig? I think it became the most apparent to me at tonights Slipknot's headlining act together with Papa Roach and Helmet. If you can see a guy taking care of his four years younger brother at a gig, while he himself is only 16 years old you immediately get the feeling you've walked into a Good Charlotte concert. I wouldn't be surprised if the average age at tonight's gig was below 15 years old as I could stand all the way at the back of the most pit behind two thousand people and still be able to see the stage clearly over other peoples heads somewhere far down below. I must admit already here that I'm not the biggest fan of nu-metal and specially not Slipknot, so this made my expectations of the gig even lower than ever. Also to my surprise, the crowd didn't seem to be 50/50 divided between Papa Roach and Slipknot fans, but rather about 10/90 or so. For every time I saw a Papa Roach shirt, my eyes would be able to catch a minimum of ten slipknot shirts surrounding him. But the fans seemed to get along well tonight, the two bands being in the same genre and all.

Helmet

Helmet kicked off tonight's very popular lineup. Now, I don't know how a band like Helmet have managed to avoid filling up my cd shelf with their records before tonight (I guess it had something to do with them breaking up in 1998 and just recently re-uniting), but that's certainly going to change as of right now. I had read lots and lots about this band but never actually heard any of their music until tonight. And as I was waiting for their entrance to the stage (which, by the way, was very egoistic and humble at the same time), I couldn't help but to think in my mind that these guys have been making music for longer than a third of the people here have lived tonight. Quite a funny fact indeed.

But once they actually got on, and player their set, I realized why I had read so many good things about them beforehand. And suddenly it was all clear why Slipknot had chosen Helmet as their support band on their tour. This is clearly a band that is/was of a great influence to all existing nu-metal bands, including Slipknot. Their raw, industrial, heavy and humble sound, resembling that of Fugazi's infamous sound, was astonishing to watch. Their dead on guitar solos more complex than bands like Linkin Park can even dream of, note after note just made sense. You could just see their greatness being reflected from their intensity on stage. I mean these guys are old, you can't expect them to be running up and down the stage throwing somersaults. But would they even need to do that? Nope not at all. Their guitarists provided all the action needed with the ultra heavy riffs and perfectly timed guitar solos, each better than the previous one. These guys clearly knew what they were doing, and the 3,000 capacity KB hallen were completely sold to the band in just 25 minutes. It's a shame they didn't get to play more than that. Awesome performance by the Fugazi-era post-hardcore legends.

9

Papa Roach

And where Helmet charmed the crowd with their musical abilities, Jacoby of Papa Roach jumped on stage with his ever-growing charisma and held the crowd from the palm of his hand from the very beginning. It is clear that Papa Roach's live performances live on Jacoby's Billy Joe Armstrong-like crowd handling with making half of the crowd sing one thing while the other half sings the other thing. Song after song, starting all the way from "Dead Cell" Jacoby made the crowd sing nearly all of the choruses to the songs, and to my surprise well over 70% of the Slipknot shirter's knew the lyrics too. He addressed the crowd, the city, and seemed genuinely happy of being in Denmark for the second time with his band. Last time I saw them they had just released "Getting Away With Murder", and they spent most of the time on stage complaining about all the bad things they went through after "LoveHateTragedy". This time around, there was no sign of whinyness. They seemed passionate about what they were doing, and especially their frontman Jacoby stood out from the band. He spent most of their set moving up and down on one of the front amps on the center of the stage, so he would end up being visible higher up than the rest of the band. Someone's being a little egoistic here, eh?

So their 40 minute set included most of the obvious songs like "She Loves Me Not", "Last Resort" and "Between Angels And Insects", but where was "Infest"? What about "Revenge" and "Scars"? But as always, you can't please everyone, even though I think they relied too much on their newest album during their short set. But to everyone's surprise, Papa Roach covered a Queens Of The Stone Age Song briefly, namely "Feel Good Hit Of The Summer". It sounded really strange without the garage-like guitar sound and with Jacoby singing instead of the usual QOTSA frontman. And why did they place it as their fourth song instead of one of the last songs? Strange.

Overall, Papa Roaches performance wasn't any better than last time I saw them. It wasn't bad or anything, but I couldn't help feeling a little bit bored over watching Jacoby just stand there and move up and down, from side to side waving his hand up and down while rapping the verses. One thing I have to give to them though: they really know how to handle their crowd, and everyone who hasn't been to more than 10 concerts in their life loved them. Fair performance.

7

Papa Roach setlist:

  • 1. Dead Cell
  • 2. Not Listening
  • 3. She Loves Me Not
  • 4. Cover of QOTSA - Feel Good Hit Of The Summer
  • 5. Getting Away With Murder
  • 6. Be Free
  • 7. Blood
  • 8. Done With You
  • 9. Harder Than A Coffin Nail
  • 10. Broken Home
  • 11. Between Angels And Insects
  • 12. Last Resort

Slipknot

Now before I write anything stupid, I must note to the readers that the only Slipknot album I own is "Iowa". And I've listened to it maybe once or twice about four years ago when it was released, and on top of that I've heard a couple of their other songs here and there. So that should be enough to say that i'm not the biggest fan of this band, so I had no idea what to expect. Okay that's a lie, I expected an absolutely shit performance because there were just too many 10 year olds running around to make it feel like a real hard rock/metal concert (I wish they'd put up age limits to gigs over here...). But boy, was I surprised. From the moment Slipknot entered the stage I knew I was going to witness something I'd remember for a very, very long time.

From the crazed banging of the right side drums, where one of the 'Knotters looked like a gorilla banging those drums disguised as garbage cans up and down against the floor, all the way to the berserk way the stage was cleared for an almost tank-like opressive domination by the one man drummer performing a drumbeat good enough for marching towards the front in Normandy, the band delivered a top notch, flawless performance. Smoke effects invaded the stage while Corey, their lead singer, monstrously broke through the smoke to deliver the insane vocals people are used to hearing from Slipknot. He passionately dived around the stage, making semi-somersaults onto the floor and just generally rising from the floor like a volcano about to erupt. During one of their songs (forget it, I will never know the name of it so don't even think of asking me), Corey literally fell down on the ground only to ask the crowd to follow with him. And actually that's one of the best 'followings' i've ever seen. About 99% of the people standing went down to the floor and followed Corey closely as he was singing the lyrics of the song, and slowly rising upwards, until finally exploding into a stupendously big jump, still closely followed by the crowd. Boy did I feel sorry for those young ones somewhere in the middle of that crowd that now resembled more of the atlantic ocean than of the local pond it had seemed to be just before.

As far as I could tell, they played most of their most famous songs including "People = Shit", "Duality", "Disasterpiece", "Left Behind" and "Vermillion". There are only two Slipknot songs I actually know and listen to frequently. One of them is "Duality", and the other one is "My Plague". It would've seen cool to see the other one live, too, but they decided not to play it. But that doesn't matter, because Slipknot delivered a performance worth a full 10er tonight. Fucking great stuff even though it's not a band I specifically like.

10

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