Music

Slipknot’s five most pioneering moments in metal

We asked our resident metal blogger and huuuge Slipknot fan, Dan Hudson, to tell us his top five Slipknot moments from their unbelievable career so far…

1. Iowa, 28 August 2001

I remember this date vividly. I got up as early as I could, headed to my local HMV and raced home with what quickly revealed itself to be the heaviest album I’d ever heard in my life.

Six days later was possibly the best thing that’s ever happened to the British album charts. Iowa beat the enormously hyped (and vastly overrated, IMO) The Strokes Is This It? to No. 1; undoubtedly the heaviest release to hold that position before or since.

Slipknot - Left Behind [OFFICIAL VIDEO] [HD]

2. Iowa tour, 20 February 2002

Two days before my fifteenth birthday, I was lucky enough to catch the band destroy the Birmingham NEC. I’d never seen anything like it. Fans in masks and boiler suits in abundance, Clown and Chris Fehn banging their heads on 10-foot drums, Joey Jordison’s spinning drum solo, mosh pits the size of car parks and 16,000 people sitting on the floor and jumping in the air en masse for Spit It Out (before every other band stole this from them, this was genuinely a pioneering and exciting concept) and by the end of the show the fans had ripped the red covers from the seats and they were flying across the arena.

The rumour at the time was that the NEC group had ‘banned them for life’, although given that they are playing this venue again (now the Genting Arena) next Friday, I suspect that that’s not the case.

The London leg of this tour was released as the Disasterpieces DVD.

3. Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses, May 25 2004

There’s just SO MUCH GOING ON IN THIS ALBUM – from the established brutality of The Blister Exists and Three Nil to the atmospheric Vermilion and unexpected acoustic tracks in Circle and Vermilion Part 2. Then there’s tracks like The Nameless which contains all of these elements and the pop/metal song that started a thousand mosh pits the world over, Duality. If you’ve never listened to this album from start to finish, I’m actually jealous that you still have this experience to come.

Slipknot - Duality [OFFICIAL VIDEO] [HD]

4. Download Festival, 13 June 2009

Arguably the most important live show of their career, the ‘knot joined the likes of previous headliners Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Metallica in the prestigious Saturday night headline slot. They absolutely decimated Donington Park and took their rightful place in metal’s top tier.

This was released as the (sic)nesses DVD in 2010 as a tribute to their former bassist, the late Paul Gray.

5. Slipknot / Korn co-headline, January 2015

It was a line-up that would have positively floored myself and any nu-metal fan back in the early 00s. Back then, I used to wonder why the huge mega-tours the States seemed to attract never really made it over here.  Then, Slipknot and Korn together, in the UK, would have been unthinkable. In 2015 though, arguably the two most important modern metal bands joined forces for an absolute Goliath of a tour. Korn made a welcome return to arenas and on the closing night of the tour, brought out both Slipknot and openers King 810 in a rousing cover of the Beastie Boys Sabotage.

Korn - 'Sabotage' Featuring Slipknot live in London 2015

And there’s plenty more where that came from! Slipknot tour the UK between 8 – 13 February, with support from Suicidal Tendencies and SikTh, book now at Ticketmaster.co.uk.

Like this post? See more from Dan at @danhudson and danhudson.net, plus catch up with all this Ticketmaster Blog posts.