Wall of Paladins delivers on Stone Sour tour
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On the road since late August with The Prince of Darkness, Stone Sour has made a serious opening act impact with a “huge wall of overwhelming colour” made up of multifunctional Elation Professional Paladin LED effect lights supplied by Bandit Lites.
“I knew coming into this tour that I didn’t have access to LEDs and with Stone Sour I need to have my colours flash quickly,” said Warner, who also serves as the tour’s lighting director/programmer. “I could’ve done a pod of small moving heads, but with the amount of fixtures the Ozzy tour was giving me, who’d see them? So I took the original pod idea that was used on our previous tours and decided to go with a wall of bright LED fixtures that would hold their own to what was given to me by the Ozzy tour.”
Warner created four upstage pods of Paladins, versatile hybrid luminaires with zoom that can function as a bright blinder or strobe, powerful wash light, or, because of its multiple pixel zone control, pixel map and eye candy looks. Each pod contains nine fixtures in a 3 x 3 matrix for a total of 36 units that play a prominent role in the lighting design. “The beam is incredibly bright and the zoom is amazing,” the designer comments. “It has great dimming as well. This rig goes in and out super fast, and my crew chief Adam McIntosh does a fantastic job.”
Warner uses the fixture’s manual tilt adjustment to aim the Paladins upward (to avoid blinding the audience) and zooms them out for blinder effects. The Paladin is also IP65 rated for multi-environmental use, a feature the designer values. “We do mostly outdoor shows so there is no need to wrap them in plastic if it’s raining,” he said.
Stone Sour features one of hard rock’s most celebrated frontmen in Corey Taylor, who also fronts the heavy metal band Slipknot. Touring in support of their latest album Hydrograd, the band will be out with the Ozzy Osbourne tour until 13 October.
(Jim Evans)
