I must start this review with identifying the source of my ticket; the Isla Bell Charitable Fund. Isla Bell was a young artist and environmentalist from Melbourne whose recent death is been the subject of a murder investigation. The family has established a charity to provide a scholarship to young women artists, and I deeply encourage everyone reading this to donate. I was provided the ticket with the provisio that I had “to party as hard as Isla”. Despite my aged fitness, I don’t think I quite made to that level; but I gave it a very honorable attempt.
On that note, it’s a simple matter of fact that your reviewer a wide-range of music tastes, to the point that some would say too wide. They are objectively wrong. Different music styles appeal to, and can generate, different emotional states and understanding those states provides an avenue of empathy toward others. With music, you can feel what other people can feel and it’s a relatively simple step-by-step process to go from one genre to another. For an opinionated arse like myself, I have to evaluate whether a musician provides depth of a particular emotion, performs with competence and technical ability, and does so with creativity and style.
Whilst there is a relatively small collection of this genre in my collection, I really can appreciate it for what it is. Likewise, as an aging goth-punk, I could feel utterly comfortable in the surrounds of an estimated thirty thousand metal fans in the warmth of Flemington Racecourse. The tickets, at $239AUD, where actually more than reasonable given the line-up of some seventeen or so performers over the course of the day, as well as the Slipknot museum. It must be said, the style of the performers came with significant diversity; for example, bands like “Health” can easily find their home in any industrial-goth club as much as an event like this.
Over the course of the day, I was particularly impressed with the Dutch band Within Temptation and the Russian band Slaughter to Prevail. For the former, they played according to their gothic and symphonic metal, and their rather popular single from 2011 ‘Faster’, was especially well done, fitting the evocative lyrical content of not being able live in a fairytale of lies, and certainly matching the vocalist’s dark fantasy headpiece. For the latter, they come with the completely different style of deathcore; hard and strong, played with head-banging intensity. Special kudos are also given to the band for calling a halt to their proceedings as medics attended to one member of the crowd that required their attention.
Another band I must mention with some detail is Babymetal. Now I remember when this band came out, effectively creating the genre of Kawaii metal. Many purists were – and still are – horrified by their combination of J-pop sensibilities, choreographed dance moves, and heavy metal styling and instrumentation. Personally, I thought it was a hilarious synthesis of two divergent genres, and the purists should take consideration of the lessons of emotional range, creativity, and competence. Babymetal does all this well; from their introduction of a light take on Japanese metaphysics, their space-gothic costumes, and their deliberately fun sing-a-long “Ra-ta-ta-ta,” they provide a smile and a change of pace that is still appropriate for the milieu.
Prior to the headline act themselves, A Day to Remember were actually the weakest band in terms of assessable criteria. True, they had a large gathering of fans who were obviously enthusiastic. They also had gimmicks, including multiple explosions of confetti and streamers, encouraging crowd-surfing by using individuals as surf-boards, and generally engaged in fun conversation with the audience. That was all fine and good, but when it came to their music, A Day to Remember is A Band to Forget.
Finally, the headline act. Playing in the evening thankfully the temperature had dropped below the boiling point. Whilst the band announced that unfortunately founding member Shawn “Clown” Crahan was unable to attend, they did not let this loss prevent an excellent closing set for the day. In their famous outfits, performing with energy shared with the crowd, with outfits and masks fitting their biohazard styling, they put on an excellent set, albeit with a very heavy bias on their first album making up almost half their set, including (sic) for the opening and Scissors for the closing of the encore. Among this there was also my personal favourite from the band, “Wait and Bleed.” Also of note was the first live performance of “Gematria (The Killing Name),” and what I thought was a particularly good performance of “Duality,” often more famous for having one of the greatest music videos of all time, from Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) to close the main set.
It was a hot, crowded, sweaty event with a racecourse full of metal-heads and those with close affinity. It was loud, raucous, scruffy, and energetic. It came with plenty of play aggression, but little real aggression (I saw one incident where a person tried to be angry and everyone around him laughed). Rather like the old saying that hippies are arsehole pretending to be nice, whilst punks are nice pretending to be arseholes, you could say that the metalheads are peaceful pretending to be aggressive (whilst certainly understanding the emotional content of aggression). At least that was the happy experience of Knotfest 2025 in Melbourne.
Now, go back to the start of this article. Click on the link, and donate to the charity. Please.
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