By Bryan McCabe
Knotfest – Alpine Valley – East Troy, WI 6/4/2022
It was a cool, rainy, late spring day. Ho99o9 had to miss this date because of COVID. Cypress Hill was down a man with Sen Dog back home recovering for medical reasons. Despite this all, none of that was going to stop thousands of diehard Slipknot fans from turning out to support their favorite band.
Cypress Hill and Slipknot may be on pretty distant ends of the musical spectrum, but you wouldn’t know it judging from the crowd’s response to the iconic openers. They got the crowd warmed up with songs like “When the Shit Goes Down” and “Dr. Greenthumb”. Even with the group being down a man, Cypress Hill were fully engaged with the crowd and you could tell that they were having a great time performing. No Cypress Hill concert would be complete without classics like “How I Could Just Kill a Man” and “Insane in the Brain”. The cherry on the top of their performance was made even sweeter by the fact that this song is the unofficial anthem of our own Wisconsin Badgers. Of course I’m talking about House of Pain’s “Jump Around”. If there’s any crowd that’s going to go wild for that song, it’s us fans in Wisconsin.
With the rain still falling at a steady pace, the crowd was eagerly waiting for the giant Slipknot curtain to fall and for the insanity to begin. While still hidden from the crowd, the band tore right into “Disasterpiece”, Corey Taylor screamed “Nobody stop me”, the curtain was pulled away, and the crowd went nuts. I was an early fan of Slipknot back when their first album came out back in 1999, but in all of those years, I never saw them live. I was expecting a crazy show, but even that expectation was eclipsed by how much action there was to take in with 9 people doing their thing up there on their multi level stage. Jim Root was running all over looking like a kid having the time of his life playing on such a big stage, Mick Thomson was playing his guitar in his usual intimidating fashion, and newest member, Michael Pfaff was running and climbing all over the stage like an absolute madman. Seriously, look up videos on YouTube. I don’t know how this guy hasn’t died yet. There were several times throughout the show where it seemed like he might fall from high atop where his drums were perched. For an hour and a half Corey absolutely screamed his head off. From start to finish he sounded like a beast. This setlist was an absolute monster of kick ass songs. Everything from “Wait and Bleed”, “The Heretic Anthem”, and “Duality”. I was even surprised to hear them play my favorite song from their self titled album, “Spit It Out”.
If you get a chance to see any of the remaining Knotfest concerts, definitely go check it out. You will not be disappointed.
