Knotfest Day 1 Online Stream Is Done Get Ready for Day 2 Today
Yesterday was day 1 of Knotfest, and the band announced recently that they were going to livestream the weekend. Day 1 is done, but you still can watch day 2 here!
So, I jumped on last night, to see what was going on in California for the big show. I'm a huge concert fan, and love me a lot of metal, so this was something I was looking forward to checking out. Unfortunately, I could get on early, but I opened the stream as soon as I got home. This is what I saw.
I made it on during In This Moment, and Maria Brink was doing a full-on Lady Gaga-type performance with backup dancers with her throughout the whole show. She was front and center on a huge riser with props and costume changes, dancers bopping away through the entire set.
Not what I was hoping to see from Ms. Brink and company. I've seen them before, and the shows were good, but this didn't feel very metal to me. Just my thoughts, I'm sure lots of people loved it. Not horrible, just now what I was hoping for.
Next up was the mighty Testament, one of my favorite bands, headlining the second stage, that would wrap up the parking log portin of the show.
The band was good, as they always are, but their set was plagued with little problems, and a weirdness. The sound was pretty crappy during Testament's set, at least on the webstream, with instruments cutting in and out, mics getting turned off during the performance, and more.
Then, some dude from the crowd casually began climbing the stage structure during one of the songs. Security didn't see it, and the people running the show didn't see it for a bit, either. He made it all the way to the top of the rigging, where he sat, with his arms in the air, victorious, having climbed the stage trellis so high.
The festival stopped Testament mid-song, to have them help get the guy off the stage. Good job, jerkoff, you stopped the show to get attention, and then (hopefully) got kicked out of the show.
After Testament finished is when the livestream got really wonky.
Slipknot was unable to get permission from some of the bands to broadcast their sets online, so I didn't see any Hatebreed, only a few songs from Black Label Society, and nothing from Danzig.
Danzig has a reputation for his hatred of cameras and photography at his shows. The last Danzig show I saw last year, they kicked people out of the venue if they caught you using a camera during the show.
Unfortunately, the bands the livestream people chose to replay during the blackout parts of the broadcast were amazingly freaking terrible!
The Devil Wears Prada was absolutely terrible, only trumped in awfulness by King810. This was the only time the live chat stream became entertaining, is when those terrible performances were playing back.
To read the funny comments during those show was great, people were having a fun time. But during the rest of the stream, the char was just lame and filled with trolls and asshats.
About 2am is when Slipknot hit the stage, and they came out to a rabid, cheering crowd with "People = Shit".
Their new stage gear including some riot gear-like vests, black jumpsuits with red pattering, and the barcodes. The new bass player and drummer are not hidden away off stage, as some people thought they would be.
The band still performs with tons of intensity, if not as much activity as they did in their early days. Hey, we all get older, right?
The band welcomes everyone to day 1 of Knotfest in a big way, with lots of pyro, big stage staging, and Slipknot hit after hit. The mix on the livestream didn't sound bad, either.
Get ready for day 2 today, with the livestream kicking off Ina few hours. Here's the link, so you can watch it with the chat window, in case there's a bad performance!
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