Rob Zombie, Murder Dolls,Monster Magnet @Festival Hall,Melbourne (03/03/2011)

Sat 5th Mar, 2011 in Gig Reviews

Warming things up in the best possible way are stoner metal stalwarts Monster Magnet. Opening number Tractor brings out the band’s hard rock chops early with singer Dave Wyndorf’s guttural growls of “I’ve got a nail in my head and I know that I’m gone.” Looking like a rocked-up version of Meatloaf with his overweight frame, long hair and leather jacket, it’s his charisma that draws the audience in. Musically, the band remind of Soundgarden with a bent more towards metal than punk. The squalid cesspit that is Festival Hall is unusually full for a first support act and a good proportion a singing along by the time closer Space Lord comes around.

The second support comes from horror-punk outfit Murder Dolls, who open strongly with The World According to Revenge, replete with the band covered in body paint. The appeal remains here in frontman Wednesday 13, who sounds and looks like Alice Cooper but maintains the audience’s attention by throwing in random references to Mary Poppins, Homicide Drive, and drawing the crowd into audience participation which sees the first crowd surfers of the night emerge. One can’t help feeling that musically, however, there just isn’t enough differentiation between each song which sits on very basic Ramones-style punk arrangements. They close with Dead In Hollywood.

After chants of, “Zombie, Zombie, Zombie…” from the audience, the lights dim and vampiric organ music plays as we are led into the opening of what promises to be a very entertaining set from Rob Zombie. The band emerge covered in skeletal face masks, elaborate helmets and Zombie himself with an elongated skeletal claw on one arm, before launching themselves into Jesus Frankenstein.

After the introductory songs, Zombie is quick to shed the extra weight of his helmet, claw and trench coat, instead whipping out the litheness of a much younger man. In Scum Of The Earth, he is all knees and joints as he kicks and struts around stage in flared leather pants. Visually, the massed array of screens behind the band show schlock imagery from pre 60’s horror movies and violent anime, setting off the acts shock horror metal perfectly. Perhaps due to the lengths between visits to Australian shores, material doesn’t seem to centre on one album, with older fan favourites like Living Dead Girl getting as much of a run as newer album songs like Sick Bubblegum, with its gender-dividing call and response of “Rock” “MotherFucker” while beach balls are launched overhead. Other highlights include American Witch, White Zombie track More Human Than Human and Demon Speeding, which ends in a double-kick heavy drum solo.

Apart from Zombie himself, the focus is very much on guitarist John 5, who goes through a ridiculous solo that ends in him playing with his teeth. Meanwhile Zombie, when addressing the audience, acts as some kind of crazed Preacher drawing out his words and raising his hands out above his head. The set closes out with the dirty yet catchy Pussy Liquor from Rob Zombie’s first foray into film House Of A Thousand Corpses, Never Gonna Stop and finally the White Zombie hit Thunder Kiss 65.

The band are led into an encore set by Rob Zombie’s grindhouse trailer for Werewolf Women Of The S.S. Leading into the song of the same name. The band returning to stage outfitted in SS-like red military uniforms, This leads into Devil Man before a brief interlude in which Zombie changes into robe made entirely of the Australian flag, closing with the industrial powerhouse of Dragula.