Slipknot at the 3Arena, Dublin, 14 January 2015

It’s been a decade in fact since Slipknot last graced these shores. And for a while it looked they’d never return at all.

These ten years saw a six year hiatus between albums, the death of a founding member and core-songwriter (bassist Paul Gray), and the high profile yet still mysterious departure of another (drummer Joey Jordison). New album ‘.5: The Gray Chapter’ – released late last year – came at a time when the band was teetering upon becoming just another throwback to its fans’ teenage years that never managed to make it out of the ‘00s.

And listening to the new album, it’s clear that the death of Gray in particular has left a big hole in the group. ‘The Gray Chapter’ may pick up where Slipknot left off and keep on going, but it’s still notably lacking in vitality. The 2010s Slipknot seems, at first glance, to lack some essential fire that had legions of parents worried about what kind of demented, demonic music their children were listening.

This, unfortunately, is the first impression given by Slipknot when they hit the 3Arena for the first date of a European tour.

That’s not to say that their performance lacks energy. From the moment a velvet curtain rises to reveal a stage set-up that looks like it’s been pilfered from the set of a Joel Schumacher Batman movie, Slipknot’s show is smothered in a splendid theatricality.

The band themselves – fright masked and boiler-suited up – throw themselves into it headlong from the first wailing guitar riff and avalanche of three-person percussion. The show is elaborately manic, with jets of flame, elevating platforms and a near constant flow of moving parts. This mirrors the nine man band itself, which at its best is a minutely timed interplay of nine musical machines firing on all cylinders with industrial intensity, and at its worst is a muggy, dense clusterfuck of noise which – heavy and all is it is – doesn’t achieve much.

And for a while it’s looking like the latter might win out, particularly as Slipknot roll out a selection of new album tracks early on. Vocalist Corey Taylor is clearly roaring his heart out, but his screaming vocals get buried beneath the constant clatter of percussion, as do too many of the guitar riffs.

Even as the ears receive a battering on par with the heaviest of the heavy of metaldom, there’s the suspicion that Slipknot aren’t really into to it, that they’re just posers, shouting the loudest and flirting with shock imagery for the sake of attention.

But, as the show rolls on, this interpretation gets flung to the floor and stomped into dust.

Vermillion may be the point at which everything suddenly comes together. The point at which Slipknot morph from an amusing throwback to a time when your parents not approving of your music was a legitimate concern into a band that has legitimately been worth waiting ten years for. Building from an eerie, demonic drone into a full on, cathartic release of rage, the song swells and contracts though a host of deftly executed part changes, with Taylor swapping from animal roar to reverberating clean vocals and back with enviable ease.

Slipknot somehow manage to tame the sonic chaos of the early part of their set, and make it work for them instead of against them. When the whole band come crashing in on the chorus of Before I Forget, they’ve practically ceased to be individuals. Instead they’ve become pieces in an immense heavy metal machine, deftly alternating from clean vocal bridge to guitar solo to baseball bat against beer keg to scream, and then stacking each part on top of another until their sound is a towering colossus, destroying everything in its path.

Wait and Bleed sees Taylor hunch down at the front of the stage, howling into the microphone like a dying animal, while around him, all hell breaks loose. But of course Slipknot are really in total control, no matter how much it appears otherwise. Just when it seems they’ve come off the rails, that they’ve pushed themselves to play to fast and lost control, the song changes to a new part with robotic precision, revelling a skin-tight cohesion that few bands can match.

The force of sheer momentum carries Slipknot through to their signature live tune – Spit It Out. Despite a long absence, Irish fans know exactly when to kneel down halfway through the song. The pit of the 3Arena becomes a sea of seated bodies, crouched for release. And when Taylor yells, “Jump the fuck up,” the crowd erupts, exploding into a chaos of movement as the band strikes the song’s climax.

The encore which follows seems custom selected to give the audience as much of a final pummelling as possible before Slipknot. (sic), People = Shit and Surfacing see the band return to the elemental intensity of their early years – making a noise that’s as aggressive as possible in their own personal fuck you to the world in general.

Maybe the best thing about Slipknot isn’t that they’ve endured the last ten years, but rather that the band they have become can still turn back the clock, and play like the band they were ten (or more) years ago. And witnessing that was worth the wait.