Setting out in late 2024 with 14 dates in America’s heartland including selling out New York’s Madison Square Garden, before moving on to South America and Europe, and arrive in Australia and New Zealand in early 2025, Here Comes the Pain gave Slipknot’s ‘maggots’ the chance to celebrate the band’s double-platinum self-titled album 25 years on from its release.
Having previously experienced a Cohesion PA system on a Pentatonix tour in 2023, Production Manager Rob Highcroft recommended the band’s FOH engineer, Bob Strakele, though it a good candidate for Here Comes the Pain and suggested Strakele hear it for himself. Highcroft had been impressed with the efficient rigging process and thought the system ‘kicked hard’.
Strakele was quickly onboard: ‘Once we gave a listen, we said, “whoa – this will work”,’ he recalls. ‘It’s not just sound; you feel a punch through the speaker.’
Eighth Day Sound subsequently handled the PA for Here Comes the Pain, which comprised 18 Cohesion CO12 boxes set left-right as main hangs with a further 12 CO12 on either side hang. Six Cohesion CP218 II+ flown behind each main hang, as well as the 18 CP218 II+ in six groundstacks of three, all in cardioid configuration, provided additional low end.
‘We had a lot of subs, but more for coverage,’ Strakele says. ‘Brian and I had an agreement that we were going to get most of the low end from what was in the air. It’s honestly impressive that a 12-inch goes that low and you felt that energy. I liked the people in the front row to have a visceral feeling, not an oppressive one. When the guitars were chunking, you felt it on Cohesion.’
Six Cohesion CF28 sat atop the groundstacked subwoofers to cover the front section with two Cohesion CF14 boxes providing lip fill. Pain was one of the first tours to employ the CF28 and the CF14, part of the expanded CF Series of fill cabinets from Cohesion.
‘These new front fills were just monsters,’ Strakele says. ‘Traditionally, up in that front barricade area, everything sounds thin and weird. With these, you can’t tell when you’re walking from transitional areas. They sound exactly like the PA.’
The audio team were keen to extend Slipknot’s relentless energy to every seat. ‘We definitely wanted unified coverage from front to back,’ says System Engineer Brian Sankus. ‘On this tour, we had the privilege of going to arenas, amphitheatres and open-air venues. Seeing how Cohesion reacted in those environments was impressive.’
Travelling to a wide variety of venues across required a PA that also helped the production team. ‘I like to be efficient, and I was impressed with how efficient it was up and down,’ Highcroft says. ‘This system was super-fast. It’s slick. The show ended, and in 45 minutes, the audio and control were on the truck. It was a cool team effort – you can’t really argue with 45 minutes.’
‘The band were firing on all cylinders, rocking as hard as they can,’ Highcroft says of the tour. ‘The audio was as important as anything, and the PA was booming and doing what we needed it to do.’
‘This system was killer,’ Strakele adds. ‘It made things easier for me where the guitars and vocals live. Heavy metal tends not to have mid-range in the guitars, and it can be a conundrum of pushing the guitars too loud to hear them, but you still don’t hear them. With Cohesion, I didn’t have that problem. This PA is a keeper.’
