Earlier this month, Slipknot kicked off the Here Comes the Pain Tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of their self-titled album. The nonet broke out the red coveralls, donned masks that recalled how they looked in the summer of ’99, and assembled set lists that feature songs only written that year or earlier, including some cool rarities. “It’s like a new take on ’99,” the band’s percussionist, Shawn “Clown” Crahan, tells Rolling Stone. “You have the Clown, but he’s different.”
One stop of the tour was a sold-out concert at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. In addition to fan favorites like “Wait and Bleed,” “Spit It Out,” and “(sic),” the set list featured “No Life,” “Only One,” and “Scissors,” which the nine-piece band had not played on tour in more than a decade. Over the past 25 years, the album, which made it up to Number 51 on Billboard’s albums chart, has become their bestseller, now double platinum, thanks to their catchy blend of sing-along choruses, gut-check guitar riffs and percussion, and boombox rap rhythms. It won them a diehard fanbase (the group’s beloved “maggots”) who are eager to hear every song from it live. There’s only one song from Slipknot that they haven’t yet played, which is “Diluted,” and Crahan says, “I’m sure that’s going to show up any show now.”
To Crahan, being able to perform on a tour like this is special, especially in light of the deaths of two members who contributed heavily to the album. Bassist Paul Gray died in 2010; drummer Joey Jordison died in 2021. “Something like a 25-year anniversary seems like a big selling point for a tour like this, but it’s really awkward for me because two of the most important people for all of this, for any of it, have both passed,” Crahan says. “So I want to express that I feel blessed to be in this band and still be alive and be here.” Slipknot’s performances on the tour are a tribute of sorts to their late band members as well as to their perseverance.
He can also see what a tour like this means to his fans. “I feel we have a real culture now,” he says. “We have a real life behind our 25 years, and it comes out every night and our fans stay there to the end. They don’t go to their cars. So I’m having a blast revisiting the self-titled. It’s pretty amazing to me.”
Rolling Stone photographed the band backstage and onstage at Madison Square Garden. The slides that follow feature commentary by Crahan, Kelly Osbourne, and Bryan Garris from opening band Knocked Loose.
