Live music review: Slipknot

3Arena, Dublin

Slipknot introduced a note of pantomime hysteria to heavy metal through the late 90s, with their latex-masks and lyrics that, even by the standards of the genre, came off as gushingly overcooked. Time has not dialed down their ridiculousness.

At their first Irish show in over a decade, the group — enshrouded in their trademark headgear — were accompanied by spumes of flame and performed against a creepy circus backdrop, like something out of a camp horror movie.

Such excess, it is interesting to note, does not really extend to their music. Coming of age in the aftermath of grunge, Slipknot’s best material is rooted in melody and relatively conventional song-structure.

While frontman Corey Taylor can shriek like a Klingon as required, he can also deliver a decent approximation of an angst-slathered croon, not terribly removed from that of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder.

Though there was a newish album, .5: The Gray Chapter, to promote Slipknot didn’t stint on the hits. ‘My Plague’ prompted mass-moshing down the front; ‘The Heretic Anthem’ had the veteran metal devotees in the seating area on their feet, waving their fists in a display of middle-age catharsis.

One surprise was the frontman’s earnestness. This was their first European tour since the death in 2010 of bassist Paul Gray (victim of a drug overdose) and Taylor seemed to be constantly welling up, endlessly thanking the roiling crowd for its enthusiasm and fealty to the band.

There was already a full house for support band Korn. The band were probably as close to respectable as rap-metal came and have certainly weathered the decades far better than rivals Limp Bizkit.

Stomping back and forth, a dead ringer for a dwarf from one of the Hobbit movies, frontman Jonathan Davis was ferocious when he sang, cuddly and eager to be liked in between.

7 ~ Mick Thompson Slipknot in Dublin. #PrepareForHellTour pic.twitter.com/QYy856asc4

— Sam (@SamTheEarthling) January 14, 2015

But Korn’s enthusiasm had its limits and could not compete with Slipknot’s visual overkill. Even when the music turned sluggish and introverted, we still got those spuming flames, that extraordinary set. It was, in the healthiest sense, an assault on the senses.