Ice Nine Kills dragged the ‘Scream 7’ universe onto the festival stage this week, teaming up with rising artist Maphra for the first ever live performance of ‘Twisting The Knife’ at Welcome To Rockville in Daytona Beach, Florida.
The horror metal juggernauts performed the track during their May 7th set, with Maphra handling the guest vocal parts originally recorded by actor and singer Mckenna Grace on the studio version.
According to reports from the festival, the appearance also marked Maphra’s first live performance altogether, throwing the fast rising artist straight into the deep end in front of a packed rock festival crowd (per Metal Underground).
For a band like Ice Nine Kills, whose entire identity thrives on theatrical violence, slasher references, and oversized spectacle, the collaboration felt perfectly in step with the expanding ‘INKverse’, the band have spent years turning horror fandom into a full scale metal institution, and ‘Twisting The Knife’ only pushed that further when it debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart earlier this year.
Ice Nine Kills ‘Twisting the Knife’ ft. Maphra
Originally released for the ‘Scream 7’ soundtrack, the track leaned heavily into the franchise’s legacy, frontman Spencer Charnas previously described the song as a tribute to Wes Craven and the self aware horror blueprint that shaped both his love of film and Ice Nine Kills themselves.
Maphra’s inclusion also speaks to how quickly online heavy music culture is evolving, after building momentum through viral metalcore covers and streaming traction, stepping onto a massive festival stage beside one of modern metalcore’s most theatrical acts is a serious launchpad.
Grave Diggler Premiere
Ice Nine Kills didn’t stop there either, the band also premiered their recent ‘Grave Diggler’ single ‘Hell Or High Slaughter’ during the same set, released under a fictional glam metal alter ego concept, the track ties into the upcoming horror-thriller ‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’, with the band portraying an invented ‘80s metal group supposedly formed by their fathers.
Ridiculous? Absolutely. But Ice Nine Kills have built an empire on making absurd horror concepts feel strangely essential to modern metalcore.
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