Live review: Slipknot, Leeds First Direct Arena

Leeds is infested with maggots. Everywhere you look, the city centre is crawling with boiler suits, masks, face-paint, and countless black T-shirts emblazoned with nine-pointed stars. As a singular entity they’re moving with purpose, writhing toward the First Direct Arena to feast on the flesh that started it all. The genesis of a movement. The beginning.

For tonight is a celebration of not just a record, but a culture. Twenty-five years ago, nine masked maniacs from Des Moines, Iowa, unleashed an album that wasn’t just the launchpad to becoming one of the biggest metal bands of all time, but informed the following quarter-century of heavy music. It was dangerous, it was depraved, and it was different. Brimming with piss and vinegar and a genuine hatred for humanity it connected on a deeper, more visceral level than anything else happening at the time and continues to enrapture new generations of fans to this day.

“I think we can all agree the self-titled Slipknot album is one of the most important metal records of all time,” says Bleed From Within frontman Scott Kennedy by way of confirmation, standing atop his riser addressing the growing hordes in the cavernous 18,000-capacity arena. Opening for Slipknot is never an easy task, but the Scottish warriors are more than up to it, wielding sledgehammer heaviness amongst a blinding sci-fi-rave lightshow, the floor is already opening and growing in strength. Barrelling through a punishing Pathfinder to finding real groove in I Am Damnation, new single In Place Of A Halo already feels at home in the set, adding a new layer of brutality to BFW’s brand of metalcore. But nothing is going to top The End Of All We Know stirring up the circle pits with a caustic mix of adrenaline and anticipation for what’s to come…

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And it’s not the Slipknot show we’ve come to know over the past two decades. No pyro. No mechanical drum risers. No bells and whistles. Just that iconic logo – inked on the skin of many here tonight – in gigantic letters, hanging at the back as a statement of intent. Nothing more is necessary.

As the chilling, unmistakable refrain of 742617000027 whirrs into life, The Nine arrive from the shadows. Skulking the stage in classic red boiler suits – replete with barcodes – to survey the damage they’re about to cause, before launching into the abject savagery of (sic), they cause Leeds to erupt in a blur of bodies and bruises. With no time to breathe, the onslaught continues with a blistering Eyeless and the timeless Wait And Bleed, conjuring an almost rapturous state of euphoria and we’re barely 10 minutes in.

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“Welcome back to 19-fucking-99!” screams Corey Taylor from behind his redesigned version of the original dreadlocked mask. “For the casual Slipknot fan – sorry.” Indeed, you won’t find the club bangers here tonight. If you’re after Duality and Psychosocial then you’re shit out of luck, as nothing the 'Knot play was written after the turn of the century. But if anyone is disappointed by the lack of latter-day hits, they’re very much in the minority, as for many diehard fans they’re seeing some of these songs live for the first-time ever.

Eeyore. Me Inside. Liberate. It’s music than goes beyond heavy – it’s sadistic. Much more than mosh fodder, there’s pure, undiluted bile and fury that lies at the heart of the first Slipknot record, and is what set them apart from the cavalcade of copycats and crap that came in their wake. And while these songs might be 25 years old, the raw emotion that fuelled them in the first place – and connects with fans today – is still coursing through the veins of the men that made it. Tonight isn’t just a throwback in terms of setlist and aesthetics, there’s a visible rejuvenated fire in the band, with Clown and Corey screaming until their lungs dissolve. Sure, they might not be inflicting injuries on each other – or themselves – onstage any more, but that urge to hurt has instead been turned onto the audience. Here comes the pain, indeed.

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Blasting through Prosthetics and No Life, Corey roars, “How would you like some deep cuts?” to deafening approval, before descending into a bloodthirsty Only One, closing the set in a vision of violence. As the lights go down and hidden track Mudslide from the end of the debut hangs in the air, we all know Slipknot aren’t going to leave without saying goodbye. But not as we’ve come to know it. For the first time in nearly 25 years, Slipknot return to burn through Spit It Out without doing the jump-the-fuck-up. No messing around, no gimmicks, no mercy. Back to how it was originally performed without a care for what anyone wants or expects. And it rules.

Following up with “your old national fucking anthem” Surfacing to shatter any remaining bones in the pit, Corey offers to “take [us] some place very very dark” with the sinister Scissors. Having not played the closing track from the debut in the UK for 25 years, it’s not exactly a big sing-along ending. Instead, the feedback-drenched cacophony builds and builds into a hellacious racket more akin to noise torture than a song, channelling two-and-a-half decades of torment and terror into a high-volume, even-higher intensity display of sheer fuck-you-ery. And as Leeds stands in a stunned silence, staring at the pitch-black stage and numb from the past hour of head-caving horror, there’s a dawning realisation that even after all this time, Slipknot are still the hardest band around. And the pain will never end.

Read this next:

• Slipknot: Paul Gray’s 10 best songs
• The live shows that defined Slipknot, as told by Corey and Clown
• “Thoroughly unpleasant and truly unforgettable”: Our original 1999 review of Slipknot’s debut album