Slipknot played a punishing set of music at the Denver Coliseum on Tuesday. Too bad you couldn’t make out much of it. Photos by .
I’m all for enriching your child’s life by exposing them to live music, but when your 5-year-old is sitting at the wearing a cut-off T-shirt and more make-up than Miley Cyrus, I have to draw a line. Especially when you’re a smoker who chooses to puff away while your preschooler sits in your lap, throwing metal finger hand-signs in the air while howling “Slipknot!” at the top of her tiny lungs, I have to wonder why you thought parenting was a good life choice.
But I suppose Slipknot doesn’t choose their audience, so I can’t judge them on the quality of the crowd they attract. And after more than a decade together, it was obvious that the nine dudes from Iowa didn’t care or need to care. Thousands of Slipknot fans couldn’t be wrong, and minus the social services nightmare happening next to me, I was stoked to see what the phenomenon was all about.
As the Coliseum went completely dark, the looming red velvety curtain crept up dramatically to reveal an elaborate set of ramps and platforms, each member of Slipknot positioned strategically as they hung motionless like puppets on invisible strings. The sight of the masked performers incited primal howls from the nearly packed house, bass and drums rumbling in the thick and smoky air as Slipknot cut into their hemorrhaging set.
The acoustics suffocated Slipknotap pounding sound into indecipherable oblivion, but it didn’t seem to matter to an audience that knew every word by heart. The stage became a real-time video game, what with various guitarists disappearing momentarily before running up and down the ramps like reckless pin balls as percussionist Shawn Crahan (#6) pounded on his custom-made standing drum kit with a baseball bat.
The cult-like atmosphere was amplified as the Coliseum became a cave awash in indigo lights. Lead singer Corey Taylor (#8), appearing in the middle of the floor, pontificated from within the throws of his rabid followers. On stage, Crahan’s tribal kit rose into the air and spun around as he thrashed away, and DJ Sid Wilson (#0) jumped up and clung to the hydraulic-lift drum platform, dangling like a deranged maniac.
While the sound was so distorted that I couldn’t hear a single word coming from Taylor’s mouth, it was clear that the Slipknot show was truly about the show. Lights, antics and sheer terror filled the evening quite nicely, and Slipknotap ability to tap into the basic human desire for chaos, destruction and fear with double kick drum head-banging beats and jagged guitar work was executed with frightening and impressive excellence.
If only parenting was as easy as putting on a clown mask and scaring the crap out of 5,000 people.
Bree Davies plays bass in , writes about her obsessions with Iggy Pop and Lil’ Wayne in and repeatedly fakes her own death at . She is also a self-proclaimed addict.
Tina Hagerling is a Denver-based freelance photographer and web designer. See more of her work .
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