Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF
After a few days of rehearsals at Toyota Amphitheatre in nearby Wheatland to figure out how to put together their massive stage set, Slipknot‘s Knotfest Roadshow officially kicked off at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View on July 26. Joining Slipknot was an international array of metal including Volbeat (Denmark), Gojira (France), and Behemoth (Poland).
The afternoon started with Behemoth, long before the sun set, which is a very odd time for a band like this to be on a stage. Although it was only 80°, they must have been dying up there in their white corpse paint makeup and all-black stage clothes with the sun beating down directly on them. Behemoth did get 7 songs into their 35 minute set, in which they also managed to have a lot of smoke and even a few shots of flames. Also, the set was way too short…
Gojira followed with their own 7 song set, and Volbeat had a full hour for their 12 song set. Since I also ended up working the whole show as a stagehand, I missed the vast majority of both sets and have nothing I can say about either band (this is also why there are no photos of them here). During Gojira, we were packing up Behemoth’s set and pushing it into a semi-truck. During Volbeat, we were doing the same for Gojira.
Speaking of banners, 25 minutes before Slipknot started, their stage manager put me front and center stage (where you would normally see Corey) to hold onto the Slipknot kabuki banner from the wind blowing it back onto the stage. 10 minutes later, I was moved off stage into the barricade to hold down the center of the banner for the same reason. Once the intro music faded and the banner disappeared up into the truss, and with prior permission from my manager to temporarily break away from the remainder of packing up Volbeat, I grabbed my camera and ran back out to the front to photograph the first 3 songs for your viewing enjoyment.
After Volbeat’s set was neatly tucked away into their truck, the time was finally free to head back out into the seats and watch a decent amount of Slipknot! Their show is always great — the pyro, the smoke, the multi-level stage, the percussion risers (these didn’t raise and lower as they did on previous tours), and the majority of the band members running around like madmen, hitting kegs with flaming baseball bats, pounding on drums, walking and posing on conveyor belt people movers, and other NSFW things that would be expected from members of Slipknot…
Since their latest album We Are Not Your Kind has not yet been released, they performed only one song from it, a song they released 2 months ago. The rest of the setlist had a couple songs each from every one of their albums.
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images.
Setlist:
People = Shit
Sic
Get This
Unsainted
Disasterpiece
Before I Forget
Heretic
Psychosocial
Devil In I
Prosthetics
Vermilion
Custer
Sulfur
All Out Life
Duality
Spit It Out
Surfacing
See more photos of all of your favorite Heavy Metal musicians at Alan Ralph‘s photo portfolio.
