Review: Slipknot at Co-op Live, Manchester

For most bands, having your debut album described as “thoroughly unpleasant” in a leading magazine would threaten to derail your career before it had even started.

In the case of Slipknot, though, that review from Kerrang! was the precise kind of press they were hoping for in 1999; they burst onto the metal scene with a public image carefully curated to make them appear mad, bad and dangerous to know.

With all nine members wearing unsettling masks, they looked as if they’d formed the band whilst on a cigarette break as workers at the same haunted house. Then, there were the stage antics, with early shows less about the music and more about setting each other on fire.

READ MORE: Sean Paul announces huge UK tour with Ashanti - including Manchester show

All of this made more sense when you listened to their mission statement of a self-titled first album, a deeply nihilistic piece of work that sought to raise a middle finger to the world by forging a new metal path, melding crushingly loud guitars with samples and hip hop scratching. It might have been “thoroughly unpleasant”, but It was also revolutionary.

Perhaps that explains why, a quarter of a century on, more than 20,000 maggots - the group’s affectionate name for their followers - have marched on the Etihad Campus on a blustery December night.

In the years since Slipknot, the Iowa band have become elder statesmen of metal, headlining festivals and racking up numerous platinum-selling albums. Tonight, though, offers something different; the chance to watch as they return to their roots.

When frontman Corey Taylor assures the crowd early on that there will be no material aired from after 1999, the response is a deafening roar of approval; they proceed to play