Headliner: Rob Zombie
Support: In This Moment
Venue: Toads Place
By Bridget Taylor
Rob Zombie with In This Moment.
A living legend and a band who spent all of last year touring their asses off. Playing together in the legendary Toad's Place, people had already started a line at 6 pm, an hour before the doors were scheduled to open. I say "scheduled" because they didn't open the place until 7:30pm. The show roughly ended at 11:15pm.
In This Moment came on for a full 30 minute set. Donned in a shiny light blue puffy dress with white outlinings, Maria Brinks stood apart from her band members (who were all dressed in black and band shirts). While screaming out the lyrics to her songs, she would occasionally rock side-to-side or lean on the ground to headbang. Honestly, she didn't do too many antics. They performed songs from their CD "Beautiful Tragedy" including Ashes and Beautiful Tragedy (saved as the last song).
One of the more spectacular sights to see was the drummer. Right before Beautiful Tragedy, he held a solo on stage, including a section where he had the audience clap as he drummed out a beat with them.
Overall, as this was my first time seeing them, it was a decent performance. My only rants are: Maria didn't seem to get into the "metal spirit" (She basically stood and walked, with occasional body twirls); Also, Maria has to choose between singing or screaming. While it works on the CD, she seems to lose her singing voice because she's prepping for a scream. The last twitch: In This Moment left after they played, so no fan sightings or autographs.
At almost 10pm, it was time for the big man: Rob Zombie. He started the show off in a bad way: His "Halloween" music came on, with pumpkins flashing on the television screens on stage (5 in total; two big ones on the stage, three small on the edge), and the audience roared. Five minutes later, it cut off, leaving another ten minutes until he actually started to perform. When Rob Zombie actually did start, the first song was "American Witch". Images of vixens and women flooded the screens; Two women dancers were in the background in corsets. Rob had the crowd riled up, jumping from speaker to speaker, letting them sing along with the songs (he stopped singing and pointed the mic out to the crowd). Also did a lot of interaction and talking to the crowd. At one point, a fan was holding up a sign, and he ripped it out her hands, saying she was crazy to hold a sign up for long, and made a reference to "American Idol".
He played a mixture of both his songs and previous White Zombie songs, such as "Living Dead Girl", "Thunderkiss '65", "The Devil's Rejects", and ending with "Dragula". Before the big finale, though, he asked John 5 (guitarist, formerly of Marilyn Manson) to "pick the next song". This led into impromptu covers of "Enter Sandman" by Metallica and "Sweet Dreams" originally by Eurythmics.
Zombie lived up to his legend of putting on a great show, but the only problem was his singing: Even though most of it WAS audible, there were times where his voice completely blended into the music. He also had fans wait outside for an hour to see him, but he once never left the tour bus. Great night. If by some chance you've had no time to see either of these bands, what are you waiting for?!
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