Slipknot.
Alexandria Crahan-Conway*Slipknot are extending their busy fall plans with another installment of Knotfest, dubbed Knotfest Los Angeles, which they’ll headline at Los Angeles’ Banc of California Stadium on November 5th. Bring Me the Horizon, Killswitch Engage, Fever 333, Code Orange, and Vended will also perform, along with the aerial dance troupe Cherry Bombs. The general on sale will begin Friday at KnotfestLosAngeles.com, while presales start Tuesday.
The event follows the announcements of Knotfest Iowa, which kicks off the band’s concert activities on September 25th, and the touring Knotfest Roadshow, which stretches across the States from September 28th to November 2nd. The Roadshow dates all feature support from Knotfest Los Angeles performers Killswitch Engage, Fever 333, and Code Orange. (The band has also announced the postponments of planned 2021 Knotfest events in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia to next year.)
Slipknot intends to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their commercial breakthrough, Iowa, which made it up to Number Three on Billboard when it came out. Each of the Knotfest events will feature a museum with memorabilia and artifacts from around the release of Iowa. At Knotfest Iowa, the band will also offer tastings of its small-batch Iowa whiskies, No. 9 Iowa Whiskey and No. 9 Reserve, and band-branded beers.
Prior to the band’s live events, the group is currently recording a follow-up to their 2019 album We Are Not Your Kind.
The group’s frontman, Corey Taylor, recently embarked on a solo tour, which he chronicled in a three-part tour diary for Rolling Stone. In the final installment, he paid tribute to Knotfest Los Angeles performers the Cherry Bombs, which features his wife Alicia. “This is no ordinary revue; hell, there isn’t even an easy way to describe it,” he wrote. “It’s more than just a dance troupe. It’s dance, and fire performance, and aerial performance, and pole performance, coupled with storytelling and angle grinding for good measure. Now even an expanded mind needs a minute to take that all in.”
At the BTS concert in Tokyo on Friday (April 17), j-hope opened up to ARMY with heartbreaking news. His grandmother, who played a major role in raising him and had always been proud of his journey with the group, has passed away.
Speaking to the packed crowd at the Tokyo Dome, the K-pop star chose to be open with fans about what he was going through. “Honestly, this might be a bit of a heavy thing to share, but I really wanted to express how I’m feeling today,” he said, translated from Korean into English. “Right after we arrived in Japan, I got the news that my maternal grandmother, the one who raised me from when I was little, had passed away.”
“I felt completely stunned and did not really know how to process it at first, but being around the members, sitting down together for meals, and focusing on rehearsals helped me more than I thought it would,” j-hope went on. “My grandmother was always incredibly proud, not just of me but of all the members. She truly believed in what we do. So I feel like if she was watching from above today, she would have loved every second of it.”
He closed by thanking the audience for making his first performance after the loss feel meaningful and full of support.
BTS are currently touring in support of their new album ARIRANG, which has just earned a third week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Following three opening shows in Goyang, South Korea, the group is set to perform twice at the Tokyo Dome before heading abroad for the North American leg. Before the tour wraps in March next year, they will also visit Latin America, Europe, Australia, and several other regions across Asia.
On the same day as the first Tokyo concert, j-hope’s solo interview with Rolling Stone was released. During the conversation, he spoke about stepping into a leadership presence within the group. “I think that’s my role on the team,” he shared. “It just comes naturally. It feels strange to even call it a role, but I just try to handle things as they come and support the other members in any way I can.”
Additional reporting from Billboard Korea.
