Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Stadthalle / Vienna / Austria
Concert date: 27.11.2008
Attendance: 15
Like all true heavy metal fans, us Slovenes included, we could not possibly skip the tour that put Children of Bodom, Machine Head and Slipknot under one banner at Vienna’s Stadthalle!
Departure was from Ljubljana’s Tivoli at 9 a.m., where the buses were already waiting for us! We knew it would be quite a few hours on the road, but that didn’t dampen the excitement we were all carrying around, since we could hardly wait for Slipknot, some of us for years already! We got to Vienna around 3 in the afternoon, and they dropped us off about 100 m from the hall! The hungriest among us headed straight for the kebab stands, which, believe it or not, were not in short supply, while the rest of us wandered around to check out the outside of the hall, grabbed a coffee, and then of course came an ice-cold beer! We didn’t have much time, because by six we already had to be waiting at the entrance, where a crowd of metalheads, rockers and … was busily gathering.
What we liked most about the Viennese way of organizing things was that we never waited more than twenty minutes for anything! Once we got inside the hall, stands were already luring us in with t-shirts, scarves, caps, gloves, belts… in short, a huge haul of merch from all three bands.
The show was scheduled to start at 7 p.m.! And it did! Children of Bodom hit the stage first and, in their 30 minutes, showed us a real technical spectacle! The band was phenomenal and absolutely shone in their style of music, though I couldn’t say the same for their stage show, but still, around 3,000 people had gathered in front of them! What bothered me most was their sound at the start of the gig, which was downright catastrophic, something a band like that shouldn’t allow itself!!! Technical brilliance or not, a band like that shouldn’t afford such a big minus in the sound, so sadly, all things considered, they came across as a slight disappointment.
Around twenty to eight, it all just exploded when Machine Head came thundering onto the big Viennese stage! The sound was suddenly cut from a completely different cloth, it got serious power, and when they played Imperium I thought my head was going to burst! The crowd immediately packed into the floor, crushed up against the barrier below the stage, the stands came alive, and the hall finally turned into a proper concert atmosphere, with no brakes at all: jumping, going nuts, growling (screaming)! I really liked their stage setup, since they had a very polished, well-crafted stage where they proudly showed off their Machine Head logos! In short, their part of the show was pulled off at the highest level, just as you’d expect from such a big band! They certainly didn’t forget to play songs from their current album “The Blackening”, and they closed the set with the banger Halo!!! Hats off to Machine!
During the changeover between Machine Head and Slipknot I went to the left side in front of the stage and watched everything going on behind the curtain! The roadies worked hard to swap the setup as fast as possible, and in 10 minutes the stage was ready for Slipknot. The drums were raised up from beneath the main stage on a hydraulic platform. Around half past nine the curtain was pulled back and we were already hearing the intro to the Slipknot show. The guys slowly came onto the stage dressed in their work “coveralls” and masks and right from the start tore our heads off! One of the band members threw himself off the stage straight away and made a real march through the hall with two security guards in tow! Everything fit together insanely tight. Lights, sound, stage performance. The three basic factors of any concert that decide its quality. The show was perfect because these three factors worked together truly optimally. Slipknot played a full two hours and gave us pure enjoyment and satisfaction! People really didn’t hide their excitement, and some young guy on the left stand really found no brakes at all. He stripped down to nothing and flailed wildly around, jumping. This didn’t go unnoticed even by the band, who greeted him. Singer Corey addressed him with these words: “Oh my god! Look at the naked guy over there! This is fucking crazy!”
They played pretty much all their biggest hits from earlier records and of course presented their new album “All Hope Is Gone”. For the finale, in the encore, they prepared a real spectacle: first they sweet-talked the whole hall into crouching down, then at the loud command “Jump!!!” we all started jumping and the hall began cracking at the seams. In the last song, drummer Joey pulled off a new sensation! He lifted his drums along with his little platform into the air, flipped upside down with the whole kit and started spinning. He kept wreaking havoc in that pose until the miracle of hydraulics put him back in the position the rest of us normal Earthlings are used to! Right at that point Slipknot wrapped up their show, tossed a few drumsticks and picks into the crowd and left the stage with a promise to come back to Vienna’s Stadthalle.
Personally, I can say this was the best concert I’ve seen in my life so far. And on top of that, in the unforgettable combination of Machine Head and Slipknot! Exhausted, we clambered out of the sold-out Stadhalle onto the buses that took us home to Slovenia, which in the meantime had been freshly covered with a snow-white blanket.
photos: Miha Oman
Setlist
CHILDREN OF BODOM: 01. Hellbounds On My Trail 02. In Your Face 03. Blooddrunk 04. Angels Don’t Kill 05. Hate Me 06. Mask Of Sanity 07. Downfall MACHINE HEAD: 01. Clenching The Fist Of Dissent 02. Imperium 03. Beautiful Mourning 04. Aesthetics Of Hate 05. Ten Ton Hammer 06. Halo 07. Davidian SLIPKNOT: 01. Surfacing 02. Blister Exists 03. Get This 04. Before I Forget 05.Liberate 06. Disasterpiece 07. Dead Memories 08. Psychosocial 09. The Heretic Anthem 10. Prosthetics 11. Spit it Out 12. Duality 13. Only One —encore— 14. (515) 15. People=Shit 16. Sic
Photo gallery
