KNOTFEST - Brisbane 2023
Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media | Tuesday 28th March 2023
Generations Collide at Brisbane Showgrounds
It’s Tuesday afternoon, two days after the Brisbane leg of KNOTFEST. I’m covered in bruises, and really regretting not putting in a day of leave for Monday morning. It’s hard to organise my thoughts more coherently than the notes hastily bashed into my smartphone between sets, which I’ll be laying out below, but I can say one thing very clearly, with a smile on my sunburnt face – it was good.
Pictured: The perfect billboard…
As the day started, it was immediately apparent that the shortcomings and frustrations that plagued the Brisbane leg of Good Things in December have been recognised by the organisers, and KNOTFEST is a far more efficient beast. Yes, the line was lengthy (and a tad wet at one point), but things move a lot quicker this time, and we’re through the gates in time to catch the last half of MALEVOLENCE, who are opening up the day with their brand of bruising hardcore. The sound, even as we make our way into the venue, is a drastic improvement. Running only two stages side by side, there are no bottlenecks between popular bands on faraway stages. I even got a feed in under twenty minutes and liked it so much I went back for seconds.
Pictured: MALEVOLENCE
Photos by: Dalton Collis
Having had a previous KNOTFEST show derailed due to his vocal issues, frontman Noah Sebastian has his game face on as BAD OMENS fire off salvos of down-tuned metalcore. To be completely honest, if he hadn’t pointed it out, I wouldn’t have noticed, because he’s on fire today. He enlists the crowd to help him out with a few high notes, and instigates the first wall of death of the festival, which is pretty amusing since there is a sign a few metres to his right that forbids exactly that. Cheeky sod.
Pictured: KNOTFEST hospitality - Instant best friends wherever you turn!
Next up, Melbourne’s VOID OF VISION emerge, with a singer who looks like he just walked into a goth clothing shop and said, “Give me one of everything.” Their guitar tone is monstrous – Dominatrix sounding like a fever dream version of THORNHILL – and frontman Jack Bergin whips the crowd into a frenzy, pointing out the security and telling the punters to put them to work by surfing over the barrier. He jumps down into the photo pit and climbs up onto the barrier, conductor of the chaos. They drop one more furious slab of noise, before walking offstage to the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme. Love it.
Pictured: VOID OF VISION
Photos by: Dalton Collis
Having seen their recent Moshcam set, I had a rough idea of what to expect from ALPHA WOLF, and they delivered in spades. The crowd are eating out of the palm of their hands, and Roaches is utterly ferocious. Orange beach balls are kicked out over the crowd, and from the side of the stage, it looks like the mosh pit has been transformed into a Powerball draw, except everyone’s a winner. Christ, I just wrote that, didn’t I? Fuck it, it’s staying in.
Pictured: ALPHA WOLF
Photos by: Dalton Collis
The tone of the early bands seems to alternate between hardcore and metal, and the needle swings to the former as Kentucky bruisers KNOCKED LOOSE come out swinging and give the crowd a musical black eye. The sun is beaming down and the temperature is rising, but that doesn’t seem to phase the enormous circle pits that swirl larger and larger with each song – whirlpools of happy violence.
Pictured: KNOCKED LOOSE
Photos by: Dalton Collis
Up next is SPIRITBOX, and singer Courtney LaPlante obviously didn’t get the memo about how bloody hot it is, rocking up in a thick white hoodie and plunging into Circle With Me. Bassist Josh Gilbert is all smiles, vibing with the crowd and showing off some serious chops on the thick strings, as Rule of Nines casts a deafening spell over the festival – LaPlante’s vocals unfurling across the showgrounds. Holy Roller is euphoric, and Courtney takes some time to, in her own words, suck up to SLIPKNOT, and sincerely thank them for taking SPIRITBOX and a whole new generation of bands around the world. She’s got a point. There are very few bands in the metal scene big enough to pull this off, and the fact that they didn’t just pick bands from the late 90s/early 2000s to match the tone is impressive.
Pictured: SPIRITBOX
Photos by: Dalton Collis
I don’t know a great deal about STORY OF THE YEAR, but after their performance at KNOTFEST, I can confirm that A) they can work a crowd, and B) they’re funny as hell. Squinting out at us, pouring with sweat, they let us know that they weren’t aware they were going to perform on the surface of the sun, before cheering that “We’re all going to get skin cancer together!” The banter is top-notch, and their adoption of Aussie slang is impressive. They’re not here to fuck spiders, after all.
Pictured: STORY OF THE YEAR
Photos by: Dalton Collis
Remember before when I complimented the sound of KNOTFEST? There was one exception, and that is the frustrating vocal mix for Swedish metal crew IN FLAMES. I’m almost front row, and I can barely hear Anders Fridén talking between songs. During their performance, it’s unfortunately worse, turning Cloud Connected into a karaoke session for the fans. The band don’t seem to notice, and are smiling as much as they are sweating – Anders wiping his brow and pointing out that there is ice on the street back home, before sending it home with a crushing Take This Life.
Pictured: IN FLAMES
Photos by: Dalton Collis
Having had my fill of music by angry Swedes, I grabbed a feed during AMON AMARTH’s set – it had to happen at some point – but I could hear the “ROW” chant from across the showgrounds. I return to see NORTHLANE absolutely dominating the crowd – video screens glowing and flickering through the stage smoke as Marcus Bridge throws shapes and sings his heart out. Clockworks is absolutely soaring, and by the end of the set, one of their guitarists is crowdsurfing and playing while looking up at the setting sun. He glides forward, back into the photo pit, and hurls his instrument up through the air, where it arcs down and lands in the waiting hands of his guitar tech. Awesome.
Pictured: NORTHLANE
Photos by: Dalton Collis
Touring Australia for the fourteenth time in their career, TRIVIUM are right at home onstage in Brisbane tonight – Matt Heafy’s electric eyes and shaved head giving the impression of a slightly smaller version of The Rock as he amps up the crowd. “The best crowd of the tour so far,” he tells us, “has been Sydney.” He feeds off the chorus of boos, and encourages us to go harder. In Waves is volcanic, and set closer Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr is premier burnout music.
Pictured: TRIVIUM
Photos by: Dalton Collis
I haven’t had a great deal to do with MEGADETH up to this point in my life, but tonight’s set is so good that I’ve had Rust in Peace on repeat ever since. Opening with Hangar 18, they are a thrash metal masterclass – riffs are piled on riffs, and piled on even more riffs, as Dave Mustaine sings through his signature curtain of hair. He takes a moment to talk about the events of the last few years, “when cancer showed up in my life.” The C-word triggers a chorus of boos, but Dave just smiles. “Don’t worry, I kicked its ass.” The crowd roars, as he beams and says that he is “100% cancer free.” Last Action Hero anthem Angry Again is amazing, and mascot Vic Rattlehead comes onstage during Peace Sells, wearing a cheap suit and flashing the peace sign like Nixon. Dave isn’t a young man anymore, but he’s evidently still cool enough to have twenty-something girls flashing their tits from atop their boyfriend’s shoulders, though it’s hard to tell if he noticed when closing with a storming Holy Wars. An amazing set.
Pictured: MEGADETH
Photos by: Dalton Collis
When I first saw PARKWAY DRIVE, it was in a pub in Launceston with barely a hundred people, watching them tour Killing With a Smile. When they returned touring Horizons, they commanded a circle pit that threatened to take over the entire music festival. The Byron Bay band’s rise from humble beginnings to one of the biggest heavy bands in Australia is impressive enough, but tonight we see just how dedicated a band they are. Putting on a stage show with the most amount of pyro this side of RAMMSTEIN, they haven’t skimped on the production, but tracks like Glitch and Carrion speak for themselves, whipping the crowd into frenzy. Crisis is narrowly avoided when a stage invader almost stumbles onto the pyro cannons – Winston shoving him out of the way – but drama rears its head again when he blows his voice out. He addresses the crowd, sounding like he’s just gargled drain cleaner. “My voice just fucking exploded,” he croaks, telling us that they’re going to have a meeting and figure out what they’re going to do. The band brings it in, huddled with their backs to the audience, having crisis talks. It’s a nervous wait. They decide to persevere, and even though it must have hurt like hell, Winston pushes through the rest of the set, in a display of guts that gets acknowledged on mic by their drummer at the end of the set. It’s emotional stuff.
Pictured: PARKWAY DRIVE
Photos by: Dalton Collis
SENSE is dead centre in front of the stage for SLIPKNOT, about five rows back. It feels like it’s a thousand degrees, so I scull the last of my water as the giant banner rises, and a country music song starts playing. The old-timey twang of Billie Jo Spears starts to glitch and distort, before the screeching riff of Disasterpiece rings out. Corey Taylor’s maniacal laugh booms from behind the curtain, before it drops, and the madness of SLIPKNOT begins. The crowd is a lurching, chaotic maelstrom, and the less hardy are quickly evacuated over the top – crowd surfers stacked two deep as they go over the barrier. Wait and Bleed is chaos, and there is so much going on onstage tonight that it’s hard to know where to look – members darting back and forth along catwalks, as Clown and “Tortilla Man” pound kettle drums with sticks, fists and even their heads. Before I Forget, Unsainted and The Heretic Anthem are absolutely volcanic, but then the stage goes dark, and an unfamiliar voice comes over the PA. It’s one of the organisers, telling us that the show has been stopped because someone was on one of the towers. We turn around and see one particularly cooked unit sitting on top of one of the speaker towers, several stories up in the air. We nervously watch him climb down, before Corey re-emerges with a chuckle. “Brisbane, I can’t take you people anywhere. Now that we’ve established what’s going to happen when the next fuckhead climbs that tower, let me introduce you to a very special human being, Mr. Mick Thompson.” He slaps him on the backside, and the riff madness recommences. Psychosocial provokes exactly the reaction you’d expect, before Corey asks us if we’d like one more song. Duality is amazing – Clown hitting a beer keg with a flaming baseball bat – and as it ends, Corey asks again – “I said … would you like one more song?” Custer is absolutely ferocious, before I finally get to tick off a bucket list item by jumping the fuck up during Spit it Out. People = Shit is predictably furious, and we end the festival with our “new national fucking anthem”, Surfacing.
It’s a furious and euphoric end to an amazing festival. Hats off to Destroy All Lines and all the people working behind the scenes. You crushed it.
