Watch an Iowa-era Slipknot play a crushing set during the 2001 Ozzfest tour

Slipknot onstage in 2001
(Image credit: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

Classic-era Slipknot have now become a legendary beast in the annals of heavy metal. With The Nine now nearing their 30th anniversary, they have countless fans who never got to see them during their turn-of-the-millennium ascent.

However, the footage below (uploaded by YouTuber Frost Media Productions) remains a document of how lethal Slipknot were when they emerged. Filmed at a stop on the 2001 Ozzfest tour one month before Iowa came out, it shows an incensed nonet giving it both barrels, their sheer force pushing everyone present to jump on multiple occasions.

The setlist is the kind that countless fans would kill for nowadays. Although all golden-age bangers, the songs include Eyeless, People = Shit, Wait And Bleed, (Sic), Spit It Out and a primitive incarnation of The Heretic Anthem entitled Heretic Song. Hearing Corey Taylor introduce now-mainstay Disasterpiece as a “new song” is jarring, to say the least, but it was just as refined yet ferocious in one of its earliest airings as it is today. The full setlist is available below.

23 years on, Slipknot will revisit their earliest material with a setlist not dissimilar to the one they played at Ozzfest 2001. The nu metal hellraisers will tour the UK and Europe next year to commemorate the 25th anniversary of their debut album, and percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan confirmed in a Kerrang! interview that Slipknot will be played in full.

The musician asked journalist Mischa Pearlman: “You’re talking about the anniversary of one of the greatest metal albums to ever release in the thought process known as reality, and you think this 54-year-old man who just told you ‘I’m going out the way I came in’, you think for one moment that this album isn’t going to be played in its entirety in front of, like, a hundred people, 200 people, 300 people, 50,000 people?”

Slipknot setlist – Ozzfest, Seattle WA: June 25, 2001

People = Shit
Liberate
Eeyore
Disasterpiece
Purity
Eyeless
New Abortion
The Heretic Anthem
Spit It Out
Wait And Bleed

Encore:
(Sic)
Surfacing

Matt Mills
Contributing Editor, Metal Hammer

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.