Stone Sour - Saliva At The London Astoria 2.26.03
Posted by Phil McCann on 03.12.2003
Slip-not…hilarity.
Please ignore the extreme pun use in the teaser, hopefully I won’t actually try to be funny from this point onwards, God knows sarcasm doesn’t work in written form anyway. Well the written commentary aspect of my columns is never that great so let’s move right on to that there concert.
Held at the familiar by now London Astoria on a rowdy (when people are chugging Jack Daniels I use the word rowdy) Wednesday night, Stone Sour brought along friends Saliva and two-piece Winnebago Deal for their first U.K tour, which celebrates the release of the eponymous album from Stone Sour and more importantly the release of ‘Bother’. Before the gig the guitarist Josh Rand came outside to sign autographs and meet the crowd, which was actually a really cool gesture from a member of a band including members of Slipknot who you’d think were quite introvert, but there we go.
Winnebago Deal are, as mentioned earlier, a two-piece band- guitarist and drummer, and in this way they present themselves with challenges from the start- how to keep their song rounded and different. However they weren’t half bad, which means they were more than half good. Their songs were sufficiently different, if largely instrumental, and the drum work was good throughout and the high energy with which the set was presented was impressive. It was a refreshing act due to the two-piece nature of the band, but not one that caught my eye that much. In essence- respect to the band, but I probably won’t look into them.
Next up were Saliva, who I happen to think are good fun to listen to and never take their song-writing too seriously. I take pride in the fact that I quite often step back and listen to entertaining-crap and this probably comes somewhere under that category, as shown by the band playing ‘Superstar’ and then ‘Superstar 2’ in their set, both being pretty damn similar. Their song ‘Always’ was enjoyable live, ‘Click Click Boom’ was predictably woeful yet fun, and the song ‘Way of the World’ from the new record surprised me in being a more pure rock song for Saliva. Their set was fun, including Corey Taylor running on dressed as a half-naked girl with pig-tails, and got the crowd going for the headliners.
The headliners being Stone Sour, with their two members from Slipknot- James Root and Corey Taylor. The band are most famous for this, but also for their songs ‘Get Inside’ and ‘Bother’, both of which are very listenable for different reasons, and their album is overall quite enjoyable. I wasn’t completely hyped for this show, as musically I’m not a firm believer that the band has a great deal to offer beyond the first album, but I digress- I was out for a good pit and some fun screaming moments.
The band opened up by walking out onto a smoke-filled stage, with much furore for Corey Taylor’s introduction, at which point the band launched into a slightly ropey version of ‘Get Inside’, however the sing-a-long values of the song saved it, with the crowd getting to supply the ‘Run motherfucker’ chant instead of Root, and whole song generally being a moment to crash around and flail your arms around in a less than friendly manner, emo baby! Oh, by the way, not that I think Stone Sour are by any means emo- but the pits were that kind of underground emo flailing style with the whole ‘gotta be topless to be there’ gimmick infringing on it as well.
From then on the band ran through their album, with a few new and pretty forgettable songs being played as well. New songs however were called ‘songs not on the album’ which seemed to be pretty much Corey’s attempt to pimp the album…and fair play I guess.
The band made ‘Orchids’, ‘Blotter’ ‘Idle Hands’ and ‘Inhale’ all sound pretty good, and the encore brought out Corey to play ‘Bother’ solo, which was pretty much the highlight of the night as the crowd calmed down and swayed along with the supposed legend playing along to a song that he now is able to sing live with an amazing voice.
The band finished off the night with ‘Tumult’ just so the crowd could scream ‘Goddamn you’ before fighting their way to the end of the night, which was pretty fitting as the evening had been really high energy from start to finish. This is to Stone Sour’s credit as they played their hearts out, and didn’t give off the air of superstars, more a small band from Iowa trying to make it big… that technically they are…just with Roadrunner and the Slipknot name to help them.
After the show Corey smashed up Root’s guitar and screamed into the crowd, a show of respect to all the band’s fans that had paid to see them that night, which I thought was great. Taylor really seemed to enjoy being himself onstage, especially when he ripped up a Gareth Gates poster, and never really broke back into Slipknot mode. However, I didn’t like feeling like a Slipknot fan, which I’m definitely not, for the night and although this was brought upon myself it made the night a little more awkward when guys said some songs were like stuff off the first album (presumably Slipknot’s).
The 411: Well go and see them if you don’t mind paying for not brilliant music, and a good fight. Otherwise I felt I was sold-short, but I’m not one of the maggots so maybe I just didn’t ‘get it’. Whatever, it was an average show with high energy, and in the end what more could I have expected?
