Corey Taylor 19th June 2024, Helviti, Copenhell Festival, Denmark

Photo: Zoran www.sonic-shot.com

Corey Taylor had always been a busy man, unfolding his creativity in many directions. Ever since Stone Sour was placed on indefinite hiatus, Taylor focused on his solo career, alongside his bread-and-butter Slipknot. With two solo albums behind him, you’d think that he would focus more on his solo material, but live a big portion of his setlist consists of Stone Sour, Slipknot as well as different covers.
Being a professional, I guess he knows that, especially in festival setting, those are the songs that people crave to hear.

Musically, Taylor’s solo material comes across as a natural progression from Stone Sour’s last album Hydrograd, which in itself felt more like Taylor’s solo record than a Stone Sour record. Energetic pop infused rock like that should be able to work fine live, especially with a good performer as Taylor.

A couple of weeks ago Taylor had to concerts two shows due to sickness, but opening main stage at this year’s Copenhell, he seems in good spirits, with that big smile on his face and pacing from left to right constantly.

As a performer, Taylor has found his way across all his projects, and he sticks to them. He’s pulling one cliché after another, but much like the case is with Robb Flynn or even James Hetfield, those clichés work.

It goes, perhaps, without saying that Stone Sour and Slipknot songs got the crowd going most, and the band does a fair job covering those songs. They however fail squeezing the magic out of the songs, something Slipknot easily does, and Stone Sour most certainly used to do on a nightly basis some decade or so ago. Still, “Made Of Scars” was bombastic and Taylor’s acoustic cover of Slipknot’s “Snuff” was as intense as it was beautiful.

Opening a main stage on a festival is never easy, but heaving Taylor do that worked just fine. There is a safe cosy quality to his performance and that cover-band quality might not have the big impact, but it underlined the purpose of 4 PM spot – warming up the crowd for what’s about to come.