Slipknot, Korn Bring “Prepare For Hell” Tour to Nashville

Slipknot and Korn came to Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena to play for a crowd of all ages Friday night.

Fans ranging from mid-20s to 40s, parents and college students flooded to the floor and seats of the arena prior to the show. Just after 8 p.m, the house lights dropped and green LED speakers lit the stage. Within seconds of the first chord of Korn’s “Twist,” small mosh pits began to form near the stage.

Korn stepped up their stage show for this co-headlining tour with Slipknot, raising the crowd’s energy and keeping fans constantly moving. When the group last played Bridgestone a year ago while touring with Rob Zombie, they opted to play predominately from their most recent album, The Paradigm Shift. This time around, the band played a “greatest hits” set, performing their most popular songs from their 21 year career.

Unlike last year’s crowd, Friday night’s fans stayed constantly moving and singing  to tracks like the closing tune “Blind” from their 1994’s self-titled debut and their signature “bagpipe song,” “Shoots and Ladders.”

Slipknot opened a high-energy set with three back-to-back songs, leading into “The Devil and I,”  a single from the band’s latest release, .5: The Gray Chapter.

In fact, most of the set list came directly from .5, but that didn’t seem to matter to most of the fans. Whether they knew the lyrics to the new songs or not, the nearly sold-out crowd jumped with the bass and drums behind Corey Taylor’s screaming vocals.

“Whether you’ve been with us for the last 15 years or the last 55 minutes, we love you, Nashville,” Taylor said.

However, the band did not stick solely to playing cuts from their latest album and included fan favorites “Psychosocial,” “Duality” and “Before I Forget.”

Slipknot’s heavily theatrical performance included raised drumsets, constant pyrotechnics and a large metal and paper mâché, LED-encrusted statue of the Devil’s head.

The band left the stage just before their scheduled end time and the house lights dropped, but fans stayed standing by their seats and on the floor. As five minutes ticked by, fans brought out their lighters and began chanting “Slipknot” from the floor.

The band reentered the arena for their final three songs, closing the set with “Surfacing” from their 1999 self-titled album.

“We won’t be gone this long again,” singer Corey Taylor said as the band left the stage.

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