Location: Padua / Gran Teatro Geox / Italy
Date: June 26, 2013
KoЯn are among the most prominent standard-bearers of alternative metal, a scene that exploded in the second half of the nineties. Their alternative funk-metal sound and cathartic, provocative stance on the burning issues of the world put KoЯn among the most popular acts of the post-grunge era.
Having sold, get this, over 40 million copies of their studio albums to date, KoЯn may well be stronger than ever. For a run of new European shows, guitarist Brian »Head« Welch rejoined the band. At first just rejoined. Temporarily, nothing more. Modest, right? And yet it didn’t take long before the band talked him into coming back for good as their permanent guitarist. If any of you happen to remember, KoЯn played the latest edition of Tolmin’s Metal Camp festival in 2012 as a four-piece. With just one guitarist. James »Munky« Shaffer. Even more: in Tolmin, original bassist Reginald »Fieldy« Arvizu was replaced by Mudvayne bassist Ryan Martinie. On the current tour, KoЯn are still presenting the album »The Path of Totality«, which fared brilliantly again when it came out last year, messing with the top of the world’s best-selling album charts for quite a while.
Already before eight in the evening, alternative metallers Love And Death gave Gran Teatro Geox a proper shake. That would be nothing unusual, if Love And Death hadn’t actually been founded by KoЯn guitarist Brian »Head« Welch. He’s the leader of Love And Death and takes the vocalist spot in the band. The quartet of four extravagant musicians with wild hairdos and »outlaw outfits« presented their debut studio album »Between Here & Lost« (2013). And how. In a set of under half an hour, Love And Death showed off a face that borrows a lot from the KoЯn legacy. Actually, a bit too much. An incredibly »grooved-up rhythm mattress,« lively melodic interplay between bass and drums. On top of that floats a massive layering of avalanche riffs that built a pleasing wall of sound, but it was Brian himself who fascinated with his vocal performance. It’s incredible how much he recalls Jonathan Davis, both in his delivery and in how he uses his voice. An opening burst of real crossover eruption. Among the four »canaries,« the masked guitarist JR Bareis also grabbed a good share of attention, having wrapped his head in a white bandage for the occasion.
At eight sharp, the Brits Bullet For My Valentine hit the stage. Or rather, they bounced on gleefully to a taped intro of Carl Orff’s O Fortuna! The metalcore quartet went straight in with the first track, Breaking Point, taken from their latest studio release »Temper Temper«. Bullet For My Valentine put that out this past February. In just under an hour on stage, the guys rattled off a bunch of songs that didn’t exactly wow with musical imagination. The quartet cautiously sticks to worn-out riffs and solves rhythmic dilemmas with double-bass-pedal gallops. All of that is dosed out with the occasional break passage, as well as Maiden-style guitar harmonies in thirds. They play incredibly tight and are very precisely rehearsed. The vocals are convincing when screaming, while the clean lines keep to ordinary singing that would at best belong in pop waters. Emo vocals? Sure, if you like. The band mixed a setlist with material from all four albums and left a confident, compact and unyielding impression. But sadly also one that’s quickly forgotten. Like I said. A band that plays superbly, but comes across as very generic in its expression and thoroughly chewed-over in its lead riffs.
KoЯn, though, are a different story. At half past nine in the evening the hall goes dark. The intro just didn’t want to end. People are getting louder and louder! And then here come KoЯn. With their very beginning! A true, proper beginning! Picking up exactly where the band’s show in Tolmin ended last August. With the cult track from their debut album, Blind. Davis instantly hooked a crowd of three thousand heads, who merged with the band in fanatical singing of the verses. Davis left the closing chorus line to the audience, and with a single voice they confirmed that tonight the hall was devoted to worshipping the musical legacy of KoЯn. Gran Teatro Geox had turned into a proper little temple of KoЯn worship. And clearly this show was going to be something truly special. The band just refuses to leave the debut album and carries on with Ball Tongue. The sound was fantastic. Fully charged. Warm, massive, irritable and eruptive! The next peak of the show was definitely Shoots and Ladders, where Davis treated himself to an intro on the bagpipes. An anti-war song. During its performance the Italian tricolor was drawn across the projection screens in the background, which triggered a proper delirium tremens in the Italian crowd. They just wouldn’t stop howling. Davis proved himself an exceptional frontman. He’s a vocal chameleon who masterfully colors his vocal essence and conjures real vocal miracles with it. His ominous »screams« worked at such power that they came close to genuine growls, and he balanced them with sudden switches into a completely different emotional state, tied to the message of the lyrics themselves. Exceptional playing, exceptional articulation, exceptional posture and confidence. The wild men and fans of dreadlocks didn’t cool off for a second during the show. They spun furiously on stage in the style of a true Native American medicine ritual, commanded by the unbridled Jonathan Davis. The great setlist also fed the madness, surprising with a brilliantly mixed selection of KoЯn classics. It didn’t let the fans breathe. After Shoots and Ladders came the »Untouchables« classic Here To Stay, then another return to the debut album with Helmet in the Bush. For the Italian leg of the tour specifically, KoЯn brought back Y’All Want a Single from the album »Take A Look In the Mirror« (2002), which they hadn’t played live on the tour until then. Sadly, in Padua Lies (again from the debut studio album »KoЯn«) dropped out of the setlist, even though it was on the list of songs. But nobody lost any sleep over it. The fact that the band is actually promoting the album »The Path of Totality« was barely noticeable against such stiff competition from the songs picked for the repertoire. All in all, the band radiated great spirits.
KoЯn remain great masters of genre fusion and unpredictable musical twists, shaped by the band’s authentic crossover paradigm, which strives for real exploration and never stops testing the untested! If we stretch the genre curtains a little, somewhere after the grunge eruption of the nineties ended, some other adventurous bands with their own homegrown vocabulary stayed on the scene, and they still form a special conglomerate of rock and metal music today. Their musical output stands on its own! Besides KoЯn, bands like that include Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Living Colour, Faith No More,…
Given the experience of Metal Camp 2012, this time around hanging out with KoЯn instantly washed away the memory of their Tolmin show. Even though the Tolmin show was very good, you could feel the difference in quality. Especially in the intensifying of moods, which created even greater contrasts between the individual atmospheres. Apparently there have to be two guitarists and Fieldy in the lineup for Davis’s ritual of total vocal excess to fully spark in its mission! Everything worked flawlessly. Including in how the sonic structures fused together. Of course, with the help of the sampling, programming and synth lines laid down by the band’s occasional touring legionnaire Zac Baird. Ray Luzier, perched high up on a podium, conjured an extraordinary performance behind his drum fortress and, with cannon-like destructiveness on one side and filigree-measured precision on the other, kept up the crucial rhythmic backbone for the massive wall of guitar riffs. The rhythmic figures readily took on the funked-up groove of Fieldy’s bass playing. In the spirit of excellent chemistry between the band members. The stage hyper-production, with its combination of bursts of light, many shades of spotlight color and film projections, co-created a special atmospheric experience that pushed you into a trance. The band handled this rich stage scenery, along with brilliant and fully immersed playing, over an hour and three quarters with their left pinky!
As expected, the band closed the show with their famous Pink Floyd cover, Another Brick in the Wall (Munky takes over Gilmour’s solos). Davis then theatrically wrapped up the regular part of the show with verses from another Pink Floyd song off »The Wall«, Goodbye Cruel World. In the encore the band first woke the crowd up with the new Get Up!, then, as expected, poured oil on the fire with the famous »Follow the Leader« (1998) classic Got the Life. With all that juiciness, only the cherry on top was missing. It’s probably not hard to guess. Stay on the album I just quoted and you get your answer. Freak on a Leash! The crowd went completely off, and the band squeezed the last atoms of feedback energy out of it. The audience carried the band on their hands through the whole show. Unbelievable. Pretty much every single song, most of them knew the verses with ferocious devotion, so at the end they earned an extremely long farewell from the band members, who just wouldn’t stop saluting their fans. They threw out a heap of picks and drumsticks, making this unforgettable night even sweeter for many a fan!
After what we saw in Padua, KoЯn remain one of the mightiest stage institutions out there, keeping their music artistically relevant and creatively fresh. Stage firepower is something they have no shortage of. Above all, Jonathan Davis fascinated with his extraordinary performance, once again brilliantly pulling off his vocal feats of total chameleonism, which comes within a hair of a feeling of spontaneity. With a solid four decades-plus worth of burdens that every single member of the KoЯn crew carries on their shoulders, we can wrap up in the spirit of the realization that these guys are clearly at the peak of their stage performance powers! Of course, in the hope that they stay a quintet after this tour too!
words: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Nina Grad
KoЯn:
Intro
1. Blind
2. Ball Tongue / It Takes Two / Lodi Dodi
3. Twist
4. Chi
5. Falling Away from Me
6. Narcissistic Cannibal
7. Dead Bodies Everywhere
8. Coming Undone (with Open Up intro)
9. Did My Time
10. Shoots and Ladders / Somebody Someone
11. Here to Stay
12. Helmet in the Bush
13. No Place to Hide
14. Y’All Want a Single
15. Another Brick in the Wall pt. I., II. & III. / Goodbye Cruel World
—encore—
16. Get Up!
17. Got the Life
19. Freak on a Leash
Bullet For My Valentine:
O Fortuna (intro)
1. Breaking Point
2. Your Betrayal
3. Waking the Demon
4. Riot
5. 4 Words (To Choke Upon)
6. Suffocating Under Words of Sorrow (What Can I Do)
7. The Last Fight
8. Temper Temper
9. Scream Aim Fire
10. Tears Don’t Fall
Love And Death:
1. Paralyzed
2. Meltdown
3. I W8 4 U
4. Whip It
5. The Abandoning
6. Chemicals
