EDMONTON -- The Shaw Conference Centre was swallowed into a crack in the Earth and cast to the fiery pit of hell last night. It was a nice break from the cold. Or maybe it was just that Slipknot was in town. For those who don't know, this is a nine-piece extreme metal band from Iowa - children of the corn! - whose members wear monster masks and expound a grim worldview that makes Marilyn Manson sound upbeat.

More than 4,700 fans in black T-shirts turned up to take in the carnival of cacophony.

They went absolutely nuts when Slipknot took the stage in a shroud of smoke, flashing lights and a ridiculously heavy thunder of drums that made your scalp vibrate like scrambled eggs in an earthquake.

The band opened with ... hell, I couldn't tell you.

There was flash and bang and spinning hair and two guys who looked like that alien from Predator pounding military snare drums.

UNSPEAKABLE

In front was a singer in a leather death mask growling unspeakable things.

For a band whose lyrics include "I wanna slit your throat and f--- the wound," it's perhaps a small mercy only the true fans can make out what they're singing.

What am I saying? All there were true fans. They sang along lustily.

The first few songs turned out to be from Slipknot's new, kinder and gentler album, Vol 3 (The Subliminal Verses).

There was nothing subliminal about them. This music was what you might call "in your face."

Band and fans alike banged their heads in a glorious confluence of like-minded fury.

At one point, one of the evil clowns whacked a beer keg with a baseball bat. Some percussion. The mosh pit raged. Bodies flew through the air. Fists pumped heavenward as the chaos raged with brutal abandon.

After a few tunes, vocalist Corey Taylor, whose stage name is "#3," addressed his fans, "Welcome to the revolution, Edmonton!" Or maybe it was "evolution." Hard to know.

This was an entire night of "extreme metal."

Earlier, incoherent screaming, booming rhythms and breakneck tempo changes were the hallmarks of opening act Unearth.

Like a thousand speed metal bands exactly like them, this music is stirring for about two minutes, then it gets old. Boring, even.

When you start at volume 11, where do you go from there? From the angry shouting school of metal, the Boston quintet was making its Edmonton debut.

Once again, little lyrical content could be made out in the din, though words like "die!" and "blood!" and "aaaargh!" bubbled up to the surface.

Fortunately, band members provided sign language translation - fist to the head, finger cutting throat and the universal sign of all things heavy: The devil horn salute.

At one point, the crowd was asked to give a round of applause for "the mighty Wayne Gretzky" and Unearth seemed perplexed to hear boos.

Guess they didn't get the memo.

MORTAL COMBAT

Up next was Killswitch Engage, which sometimes sounded like two metal bands locked in mortal combat, and with only six members, too.

They were that heavy.

This group was notable for a vocalist who showed remarkable range, from enraged Cookie Monster to mutant screeching eagle and even a few snippets of operatic minor key melody.

It was D minor, I think, the saddest and also heaviest of all keys.

"Noise" was the order of the night. The singer kept ordering us to make some.

The crowd obliged.

At the end of a mercilessly short but earsplitting set, one of the band members said, "I love you all ... and I'll see you all in HELL!"

And we're back there again.

Aw, he was just kidding.

Come to think of it, there was a lot of love lurking under all that supposed evil on stage last night. Slipknot expressed a similar loving sentiment, with #3 saying it was an "honour and a privilege to play with you."

He also said one of Slipknot's songs was going to rip our testicles off and defecate down our throats - he didn't put it quite like that - but he meant it in a nice way.

Earlier, the singer from Unearth sent a song to "all of you on the floor for showing us some love. It's called Black Heart."

Love for a Black Heart - now there's a swell name for a heavy metal band.

SUN RATING: 4 out of 5