Artist: Slipknot
Venue: Continental Airlines Arena, NJ
Opener: Gizmachi, Shadows Fall, Lamb Of God
Label: Roadrunner Records
Date: 3-6-2005

The Slipknot show at Continental Airlines Arena would prove to start with both an interesting as well as annnoying twist. Of the four bands performing, Gizmachi was set to kick it off and the tickets showed a start of 7:00 pm. On walking in at exactly that time we were told by ushers that Gizmachi had played three songs about 30 minutes ago. It is not fair to the audience who pays for the ticket or the band who expects a decent crowd to be there for a show such as this. Instead people were probably wondering why Gizmachi shirts were on sale since they had missed them and were unaware they even played. This band in particular is a discovery of the “Clown” member of Slipknot, so you would think the venue would allot some accommodation. I imagine it beneficial to generate a buzz in a new CD that is coming out. This cant help it at all.

It was also interesting to look around the venue and find it not overly crowded. Given Slipknots overall appeal to the metal fans, and then combine that with the chance to see Shadows Fall and Lamb Of God on the same bill this was odd. Looking inside the venue to the top section, one could see a black curtain draped around the entire structure. This means that not one seat was sold for the entire area. Now that’s a lot of empty seats and it would have seemed bad had it not be covered up. Also random scatters of empty sections which did not fill even at Slipknots time were very visible. I am not sure how or why this is the case, but we made the best of it and still rocked hard. Further investigation had me finding this was considered a scaled-down event, but I still felt Slipknot has the notoriety to fill this venue.
Continue reading Slipknot @ Continental Airlines Arena (3/5/2005) →