Take a cliche of a cliche and you get a Rob Zombie show. With loud, industrial guitars, paired with on-screen visuals containing gore and nudity, Zombie's November 2nd show was the manifestation of shock rock schlock. As soon as the curtain began to drop to the Halloween theme song (his recent obliteration of the 70s horror franchise), I knew that his show would emit all things ridiculous. I was right.The stage was adorned with a giant monster head, upon which the drummer sat. And on each side of this "head" a scantily clad woman stood, dancing in unison with her counterpart on the other side to each of Zombie's very undanceable metal songs (with maybe the exception of 'Living Dead Girl'). At one point a giant Frankenstein robot came onto stage. Above the stage were video loops showing gratuitous images of naked women, as well as unfortunate characters getting sliced and diced up.
Perhaps it was the venue that made Zombie's show seem all too surreal and artificial. Sitting in a small arena, Zombie's similarly sounding songs all seemed to kind of mesh into a buzz of indiscernible crunch and reverb that provided literal pain to the ear drums. Or perhaps it was Mr. Zombie's bumptious attitude that limited any excitement or interactivity he was expecting from the crowd. During the finale of his show he was attempting to force the audience to chant "Zom-Bee, Zom-Bee, Zom-Bee," and thankfully the modest Midwestern crowd didn't buy into such self-serving nonsense. (When you have to force people to scream your name, the state of your irrelevancy should be clear.)
Needless to say, Zombie came across as pompous, and he appeared forgetful that he was only the opening act. The crowd was there to see headliner Ozzy, and they did not want to put up with the self-promotion of his B-movies and songs about monsters---songs, mind you, whose only distinctions are changes in tempo and the insertion of differing sound samples. In all, Zombie's show was one big joke fest. Thankfully, once Ozzy emerged he saved the show (and perhaps the day).
Stay tuned for my review of the Ozzy show soon!
