The wormhole has opened; It’s sweaty.
“We’re going to take you back to 1995,” Dino Cazares, guitarist of industrial metallers Fear Factory, announced while introducing the title track of the band’s dystopian second record, “Demanufacture”, which was released during the same year. .
It’s a little over 1 a.m. on Saturday, the sun is up and fists are up, as Cazares summarizes the appeal of Sick New World, a marathon of heavy music that took over the Las Vegas festival grounds. Was surrounded.
In addition to testing the strength of your antiperspirant while shuttling between five stages to see as many as 60 bands as possible, Sick New World acts as a time warp, connecting metal’s past with the present. is about to.
Here, there’s old nu – as in nu metal, that hip-hop-influenced strain of heaviness that gained popularity in the late ’90s with massive record sales and even bigger pants.
“I don’t know about you, but it feels like 1999 in here,” said Corey Taylor, frontman of Slipknot, one of nu metal’s premier acts who brought an intense malevolence – and frighteningly close masks – to the scene. Brought.
His band took part during a fiery performance wearing the same old-school jumpsuits and headgear they wore on their self-titled debut, which turns 25 this year.
A rager for all ages
Slipknot’s beginnings are even older than some of the members of Japanese trio Babymetal, who performed on the Red Stage that first day, mixing their sharp thrash riffs and bright, chirping vocals like chasing a mouthful of pop rock with a gulp of battery acid. As it was. ,
The huge, sold-out crowd of thousands had an even mix of ages, there were plenty of parents with teenagers and younger fans attracted to more contemporary acts like Bad Omens, Sleep Token and Bring Me the Horizon, whose Gold The performance on stage became so heated that the band had to stop briefly near the end of the set for the crowd to step back to avoid crushing the audience sitting in front.
Who bridged this generational divide?
Black lipstick – and eyeliner, fishnets, latex skirts, leather jackets, jeans and shirts, all the same colour, the dark, gothy attire prevalent here hints at a world where vampires fear daylight on the asphalt and slam Have overcome your dislike. $15 Pabst Tallboy Under the Sun.
Oh, and dancing too.
pervasive heaviness
“Are you guys ready? Let’s boogie,” ordered frontman Ronan Harris of VNV Nation, one of the industrial and EBM acts who played the Siren Stage, ranging from the blaring Frontline Assembly to the slightly more party-friendly Front 242, who certainly had their Shopping for clothes “Math problem.”
There have been many accolades for everything from Helmet’s motorik churning of ’90s alt-rock – it felt like it was raining when they played the Spiral Stage – to grunge mainstays Alice in Chains, who struggled with drug addiction and A master at making songs about homelessness that feel like anthems somehow, to the enveloping shoegaze of slowdive that felt right at home late at night on the Siren Stage, to the funky Square Pegs Primus.
Speaking of the latter, they are currently on tour with A Perfect Circle, who also performed at Sick New World, having both played a show in Colorado the night before.
Unfortunately for the duo, the trucks carrying their equipment got caught in a snowstorm, so Primus played with gear purchased at the local guitar center, with tags still hanging from their instruments, which they delivered to St. Jude’s after the festival. Auctioned for profit.
“It’s a miracle we’re pulling this off,” Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan said during his band’s spellbinding set. “The main thing is that the show must go on.”
And in this, from 11 am to 12 noon, one’s ability to metal was tested.
let’s do the Time Warp again
“Who came here to create trouble?” Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe was a grim embodiment of wonder, trying to bring to a sick new world the same sense of barely controlled chaos that powers his band.
In terms of sheer intensity, their performance was perhaps rivaled only by metalcore supergroup Better Lovers’ Vegas debut on the Diablo Stage, where vocalist Greg Puccito attempted to force his lungs out of his throat amid a cacophony of jagged, stop-start riffs. Was. Similarly, noisemakers were being punished during Swans’ show-closing set on the Siren Stage, where frontman Michael Gira was calling for the apocalypse through song.
Performing at the same time as Swans Sick New World were returning headliners System of a Down – so many bands on the same day means a lot of conflicts.
Then again, there’s conflict at the heart of System of a Down’s repertoire, with the band relaying songs about genocide and the prison-industrial complex that are decades old, yet feel relevant and timely.
When they ended this year’s festival was over for the most part, but not before nu metal got another day under the sun – literally.
“Sick New World!” shouted Dope frontman Edsel Dope earlier in the afternoon. “We’re taking you back to 1999.”
As if we ever left.
Contact Jason Bracelin at [email protected] or 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 on Instagram
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