Already seeing a few instances of Sleep Token fans asking how early they’ll have to arrive to get on the barrier and if paying the £500 for RIP will guarantee them a spot there. Hadn’t even considered that they’d draw that kind of TikTok obsessive crowd tbh, but suppose it makes sense. Gonna be a whole bunch of kids passing out as they try and rawdog that ten hour wait.
Two gigs in quick succession here for me: While She Sleeps on Thursday evening at O2 Academy Leeds, and then Slipknot last night at First Direct Arena.
Very impressed by the former, who I have typically found to be mostly trapped in a muddy dirge of their own making when I saw them last the best part of a decade ago. They've come on in leaps and bounds.
The latter are absolutely stealing a living on this tour. Eighty-minute sets, including an encore break, with just fourteen tunes and a good bit of speech-padding. But they are sounding great still. Have my reservations on Eloy Casagrande at the back still - know Jay Weinberg wasn't immensely popular among fans, but struggling to see how this is a particular upgrade.
Oh, have they? Thank goodness for that - obviously realised they'd lost the casuals there.
Hadley very much still got those pipes, even if his crooner schtick on Through the Barricades was a bit tiring.
On a note there, I have very little love for Simply Red and cannot see the comparisons. But most of my musical elders who do not care for The 1975's music tend to tell me that they are basically the Gen Z answer to Mick Hucknall.