12/03/2025

Slipknot – Spark Arena: March 11, 2025 (13th Floor Concert Review)

Slipknot took over Spark Arena last night for a one-night-only performance and, for a few dizzying, chaotic hours, Auckland belonged to the Maggots. This wasn’t just a gig; it was a full-scale audio assault, a brutal, sweaty purge wrapped in distortion, screams, and adrenaline. R.I.P. my eardrums.

The night kicked off with a wave of nostalgia as Gary Wright’s Dream Weaver played over the PA, a strangely dreamlike contrast to what was coming. As the eerie synths faded, the opening static of 742617000027 rattled the venue, the tension winding so tight you could feel it in your teeth. Then, the drop; a wave of masked figures hitting the stage, the opening lines of (sic) ripping through the air, and suddenly it was full, unfiltered Slipknot chaos. Bodies surged forward, the floor turned into a heaving, twisting mass, and you could feel the temperature spike by about ten degrees in a matter of seconds.

From there, it didn’t let up for almost the entirety of the nearly-two-hour set. People = Shit had the entire place moving like a singular, uncontrollable beast. Gematria (The Killing Name) cut through the madness with its sharp, technical precision, while Wait and Bleed brought a rush of early-2000s nostalgia, with nearly every voice in the room shouting along.

Slipknot

Slipknot’s ability to seamlessly move between pure aggression and anthemic singalongs is still unmatched – The Devil in I felt massive in a live setting, its creeping melody giving way to an eruption of blast beats and raw, grinding fury as the crowd swirled and moshed, heaved and vibrated the entire damn arena.

Corey Taylor felt perfectly at ease and was just riveting to watch and listen to, flipping between his signature guttural growls and soaring cleans with ridiculous ease. His stage presence amongst the band is incredible, but the intermittent addresses to the audience were what hit home. Sadly missing was Clown, who was absent due to family commitments, which Corey acknowledged with genuine warmth, reminding everyone that, at its core, Slipknot has always been about heart and family.

Even amid the raw flailing insanity, there was this undercurrent of connection everywhere you looked – whether it was Sid waving to his kid side-stage midway through the set or Corey’s rallying cry for the maggots and misfits, you could feel that this was something bigger than just a metal show.

The production was just as intense as the music. Spotlights, strobes, and an (almost) total lack of phone screens made the whole thing feel like stepping into another era, a throwback to a time when concerts weren’t just something to be recorded, but something you actually lived and remembered. The entire performance gave strong vibes of the old, OG Big Day Out days, squished into a crowd with thousands of other high-energy fans, screaming with joy while begging to be splashed and squirted with water to keep going – unrelentingly receptive to every “You Want Some MORE?!” from Taylor.

Sid Wilson took the chaos up another notch with a distorted remix of Tattered & Torn that I will now be jamming until the end of time, warping and twisting the soundscape into something completely unhinged before The Heretic Anthem kicked the doors down again. I haven’t been so blown away by a live metal remix since the early days of Justice hatcheting up metal with Jay-Z.

Psychosocial, Unsainted, and Duality were clearly the trifecta that fans were waiting for, with even the seated attendees jumping up, fingers in the air, screaming and shaking Spark Arena into a messy mosh-filled paradise. Where there had been tangible excitement leading up to and throughout the set, it was this final section that switched it into glory-mode, just an absolute sea of fans getting exactly what they wanted in the best way possible.

The final run of songs was exactly the kind of all-out fan-service destruction you want from a Slipknot encore. Spit it Out came with a preface from Taylor asking everyone to sing as loud as they could – the fact that the crowd could be overheard beyond the tsunami of noise is a testament to their love for the band – before Surfacing turned the arena into an anarchic mess, and finally, the first-ever New Zealand performance of Scissors was something else entirely; slow-burning, intoxicating, and building into a suffocating, climax that left the entire room drained.

When the lights finally came up, the floor was a surprisingly polite battlefield, sweat-soaked, exhausted, and grinning from ear to ear. Slipknot didn’t just play last night. They wrecked the place. It was everything a slipknot fan could dream about; and well worth every bruise and battered eardrum offered up as sacrifice along the way.

Oxford Lamoureaux

Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Chris Zwaagdyk: