Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Padua / Gran Teatro Geox / Italy
Concert date: 26.06.2013
Attendance: 3000
Ticket price: €44.00
KoЯn are among the most prominent representatives of alternative metal, which had its explosive rise in the second half of the nineties. Their alternative funk-metal sound and a cathartic, provocative stance toward the burning issues of the world put KoЯn among the most popular acts of the post-grunge era.
Having sold, believe it or not, over 40 million copies of their studio albums to date, KoЯn are perhaps stronger than ever. For a run of new European shows, guitarist Brian »Head« Welch rejoined the lineup. At first just rejoined. Temporarily and 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 still remember, KoЯn played the last edition of Metal Camp in Tolmin in 2012 as a four-piece. With one guitarist. James »Munky« Shaffer. What’s 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 did great again when it came out last year, spending a long time shaking things up at the top of the world’s best-selling album charts.
Already before eight in the evening, alternative metallers Love And Death gave Gran Teatro Geox a proper shake. That would be nothing unusual, except that Love And Death was actually founded by KoЯn guitarist Brian »Head« Welch. He’s the band’s leader and takes the vocalist spot. The quartet of four extravagant musicians with wild hairdos and »outlaw outfits« presented their studio debut »Between Here & Lost« (2013). And how. In a set of less than half an hour, Love And Death showed a face that borrows a lot from the KoЯn legacy. Actually, a bit too much. An incredibly »grooved-out« rhythm mattress, lively melodic interplay between bass and drums. Over it floats a massive layering of avalanche-like riffs that built an unrelenting wall of sound, but what really fascinated was Brian’s own vocal performance. It’s incredible how much he reminds you of Jonathan Davis, both in his delivery and in how he uses his voice. An opening burst of pure crossover eruption. Among the four »canaries«, a good share of attention also went to the masked guitarist JR Bareis, who wrapped his head in a white hospital bandage for the occasion.
At eight o’clock sharp, Britain’s Bullet For My Valentine hop on stage. Or rather, they bounce out cheekily to a recorded intro of Carl Orff’s O Fortuna! The metalcore quartet hit straight away with the first track, Breaking Point, which comes from their latest studio effort »Temper Temper«. Bullet For My Valentine released it this February. In just under an hour on stage, the guys dumped out a heap of songs that didn’t exactly wow with musical imagination. The quartet sticks cautiously to worn-out riffs and gets out of rhythmic jams with galloping double-bass-drum pedals. All of that is dosed out with the occasional »break« passage, as well as guitar »Maiden« harmonies in thirds. They play extremely tight and are very precisely rehearsed. The vocals are convincing when screaming, while the clean lines are just ordinary singing that would fit at most into pop waters. Emo vocals? Sure, if you like. The band put together a setlist drawing on all four albums and left a confident, compact and relentless impression. But sadly also a quickly forgettable one. Like I said. A band that plays great, but comes across as very generic in its expression and thoroughly chewed-up in its lead riffs.
KoЯn, though, are a different story. At half past nine the hall goes dark. The intro just wouldn’t end. People are getting louder and louder! And then there’s KoЯn. With their beginning! A genuine, true beginning! Just like the band’s show in Tolmin last August ended. With the cult track from their debut album, called Blind. Davis instantly hooked the three-thousand-headed crowd, which merged with the band in fanatical singing of the verses. Davis left the closing chorus line to the audience, and the crowd, singing it as one, confirmed that tonight the hall was devoted to worshipping KoЯn’s body of work. Gran Teatro Geox thus turned into a real little sanctuary for celebrating KoЯn’s music. And clearly this show was going to be something truly special. The band doesn’t want to leave the debut album and carries on with Ball Tongue. The sound is fantastic. Fully charged. Warm, massive, irritable and eruptive! The next highlight of the show was definitely the performance of Shoots and Ladders, where Davis treated himself to a bagpipe intro. An anti-war song. During it, the Italian tricolor appeared on the projection screens in the background, causing a real delirium tremens in the Italian crowd. They just wouldn’t stop howling. Davis proved to be an exceptional frontman. He’s a vocal chameleon who masterfully colors his vocal essence and conjures real vocal miracles with it. His sinister »screams« sounded, in all their power, close to proper growls, and he balanced them with sudden switches to a completely different emotional state, tied to the message of the lyrics themselves. Exceptional playing, exceptional articulation, exceptional posture and self-confidence. The wild men and fans of dreadlocks didn’t cool off for a second. They whirled furiously across the stage in the style of a true Native American shaman ritual, commanded by the unbridled Jonathan Davis. The great madness during the show was fed by an excellent setlist too, which surprised with a superbly arranged selection of KoЯn classics. It gave the fans no room to breathe. After Shoots and Ladders came the »Untouchables« classic Here To Stay, and then another return to the debut album with Helmet in the Bush. For the Italian leg of the tour in particular, KoЯn brought back to the setlist the song Y’All Want a Single from the album »Take A Look In the Mirror« (2002), which they hadn’t played live on this tour before. Sadly, in Padua Lies (again from the studio debut »KoЯn«) dropped out of the setlist, although it was on the song list. But nobody lost much sleep over it. That the band is actually promoting the album »The Path of Totality« was barely noticeable against such fierce competition from the other songs in the repertoire. All in all, the band radiated great spirits.
KoЯn remain great masters of genre fusion and unpredictable musical turns, as shaped by the band’s authentic crossover paradigm, which strives for pronounced exploration and never stops testing the untested! If we widen the genre curtains, other adventurous bands with a self-made vocabulary also stayed on the scene after the grunge eruption of the nineties ended, and they still form a special conglomerate of rock and metal music today. Their body of work stands on its own! Besides KoЯn, such bands include Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Living Colour, Faith No More,…
Compared to the Metal Camp 2012 experience, this time hanging out with KoЯn instantly washed away the memory of their Tolmin show. Even though the Tolmin show was very good, you could feel a difference in quality. Especially in the intensifying of moods, which created even sharper contrasts between the individual atmospheres. Apparently there have to be two guitarists and Fieldy in the lineup for Davis’s performance ritual of total vocal excess to fully spark in its mission! Everything worked flawlessly. Also in terms of how the sound structures fused together. Of course, with the help of the samples, programming and synth lines laid down by the band’s occasional touring legionnaire Zac Baird. Ray Luzier, perched high on a riser, conjured up an outstanding performance behind his drum fortress, and with his cannon-like destructiveness on one side and filigree-measured precision on the other, he held up the essential rhythmic backbone for the massive wall of guitar riffs. The rhythmic figures readily absorbed 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 pulled you into a trance. With rich stage scenery and superb, fully immersed playing, the band handled it all in 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 ended the regular part of the show with verses from another Pink Floyd song off the album »The Wall«, called Goodbye Cruel World. In the encore the band first woke up the crowd with the new Get Up!, and 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 with the album quoted before and you get the answer. Freak on a Leash! The crowd completely lost it, and the band squeezed the last atoms of feedback energy out of it. The audience carried the band on its hands through the whole show. Incredible. Most of them knew practically every single song, verses and all, with huge intensity, so at the end they deserved the extremely long farewell from the band members, who just wouldn’t stop saluting their fans. They threw out a pile of picks and drumsticks, making this unforgettable evening even sweeter for many a fan!
After what we saw in Padua, KoЯn remain one of the mightiest stage institutions out there, staying musically relevant and creatively fresh. They’ve got no shortage of stage firepower. Above all, Jonathan Davis fascinated with his outstanding performance, once again brilliantly pulling off his vocal figures of total chameleonism that come within a hair’s breadth of a feeling of spontaneity. With a solid forty years on the shoulders that every single member of the KoЯn crew carries, we can wrap up in the spirit of realizing that these guys are clearly at the peak of their stage and performance powers! Of course, in the hope that they stay a five-piece after this tour too!
Setlist
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
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