The Cardiff International Arena is a strange place to see a heavy metal band. The interior is vast and booming and with its polished wooden floor, it's not hard to imagine a pivotal scene from the High School Musical franchise playing out here. Tonight however it's host to an entirely different ball game as Slipknot have rolled into town for the latest date on their All Hope Is Gone world tour. And they're not alone.
Propping them up in the main support slot are none other than Bay Area titans Machine Head, returning to the UK for the first time since their Black Crusade tour earlier in the year. It is strange to see them in a support role; they could quite easily sell this place out on their own judging from the crowd reaction tonight.
Machine Head: Hellalive
Kicking things off with the now well-established opener Clenching The Fists Of Dissent the band storm through an all-too-brief seven song set with all the passion and energy of a group half their age. There isn't a note out of place and when they segue into the crushing intro-riff of Imperium, the entire floor goes berzerk. Crowd surfers head to the barrier in their dozens while circle pits erupt all over the shop, the faithful loving every second of it.
Robb Flynn of course is the undoubted star and has the audience eating out of his hand from the get go. His face is permanently fixed with a Cheshire Cat grin and years of experience on the live circuit have turned him into one of the most charismatic frontmen out there. He cracks jokes, tosses vodka and coke into the crowd and seems more like a jovial prankster from the local pub than the singer for an international metal band.
Bay Area Metal: Live In CardiffLaidback he may be but this is still an incredibly fast paced-set. Machine Head have never been ones for quiet introspection but they're heavy tonight even by their own standards. More serene numbers like Descend The Shades Of Night or A Farewell To Arms don't get a look in, this evening is solely a lesson in aggression and they deliver by the bucketload. Beautiful Mourning and Aesthetics Of Hate are intense and Old gets everyone from the front to the back bouncing like teenagers on a sugar high.
If there's any complaint that could be levelled at the show however it'd be that things are getting somewhat familiar by now. The setlist is almost exactly the same as when they played Download, headlined The Black Crusade and supported Metallica so a bit more variation wouldn't go amiss. That aside this is still one monumental performance and further proof that they deserve their status as one of metal's greatest live acts. Slipknot never stood a chance.
Tim Bolitho-Jones - Confident but inexperienced, I am a 25 year old from England who recently graduated from Southampton University with a Masters degree in ...
