Anyone who watched Slipknot perform All Out Life and Unsainted on Jimmy Kimmel Live! this past Friday witnessed a polished, practiced team of musicians that knows what they’re all about. But the dudes in that band weren’t born with that confidence — it took years of practice, thousands of shows, and dozens of televised live performances to build up that kind of professional readiness. To see just how far Slipknot have come to be the band they are today, one only has to watch their first network TV performance, playing Wait And Bleed on Late Night With Conan O’Brien in 2000.

It’s not that Slipknot aren’t awesome in this footage — quite the opposite, one can instantly see the potential for world domination lurking beneath the surface of the band. Everyone is giving it their all, down to Mick Thomson frantically twitching around like a broken toy. What’s noticeable, though, is how young the band feels. There’s a hint of speediness to them that shows how nervous they are to finally be performing on TV. Everyone’s clustered together at first, Corey Taylor’s a little breathless at times, and guys like Jim Root and Shawn Crahan are just banging their heads rather than engaging the audience. Compare that with the terrifying asylum messiahs of this week’s Kimmel performance, and you see just how much this band have grown in twenty years.

Watch Slipknot show mainstream America what it has spawned in the clip below: