It is rare that I want to see every band on the bill, especially when four bands are playing. This was that rare instance. Bob, Kyle and I decided that making the drive up to Irvine on a Friday was a much better option than doing the hometown show in Chula Vista on a Sunday. This allowed us to get loose and enjoy ourselves a little more than we would have on a “school night.” None of us had ever been to the Fivepoint Amphitheatre that was built in 2018 to replace the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre I had previously seen a handful of shows at. Capacity is only 11,730 so even though our seats were near the back we still did not seem that far back. That of course did not stop me from trying to weasel our way into better seats but more on that later….
The aptly labeled “Freaks on Parade” tour started with Powerman 5000. There was a time when I really liked this band but the only remnant left from that band is Rob Zombie’s little brother Spider One. I guess if there is only going to be one member of the original band left the singer is the preferable person since actual instruments are easier to approximate than the vocals. They were alright but things just have not been the same since everyone else left. All members jumping up and down in unison just came across as very contrived. I still enjoyed it but that was mostly due to the setlist they chose. We did get away with sitting in the best seats in our section thanks to my sweet talking the security guard so that was a bonus too.
SETLIST: Footsteps and Voices, Nobody’s Real, Invade, Destroy, Repeat, Horror Show/Seven Nation Army, Bombshell, Supernova Goes Pop, When Worlds Collide
“Static-X” was the last band I saw before the pandemic lockdown. I put “Static-X” in quotation marks because this of course was without Wayne Static who passed back in 2014. Instead, this was the original lineup with a character named “Xero” filling in for Wayne. They did a damn good impression last time and this time was just as good if not better. Of course it did not hurt that the entire setlist with the exception of “Cold” was taken from the Wisconsin Death Trip album. We tried to sneak into better seats before they came on but failed as security at this amphitheater is tighter than most.
SETLIST: Bled For Days, Wisconsin Death Trip, Sweat of the Bud, Love Dump, Cold, I’m With Stupid, Push It
Though both Mudvayne and I were at Rockfest 2000 this was before they were on my radar so I really only saw them once over 20 years ago at Ozzfest 2001. They put on a pretty fierce show back then so I was excited to see if they could match that level of performance after all this time. They did in spades. Chad Gray and company never broke character and took us into the darkness, both proverbially and literally. The songs held up nicely and the band played tight yet loose, which produced a very natural sound for such a brutal brand of music. Welcome back!
SETLIST: Dig, Under My Skin, -1, Severed, Death Blooms, Internal Primates Forever, Determined, Not Falling, Nothing to Gein, Dull Boy, World So Cold, Happy?
I was no phantom stranger to seeing one Mr. Rob Zombie as I was privileged enough to see White Zombie three times back in the day and Rob Zombie solo four times before this but I had not seen Zombie since Aftershock 2019. Though I miss White Zombie I love seeing him because he has both John 5 and Ginger Fish so it is essentially like seeing Marilyn Manson at his peak with a different singer. Rob Zombie himself has always been a mixed bag in the previous times seeing him but on this particular night he sounded great. Overall, the sound from where we were was not great but the atmosphere created by the full moon and good company more than made up for it. At one point they played a good portion of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and convinced all of us in the crowd that we were going to be treated to the whole thing but then they ripped into “Thunder Kiss ’65.” You got us good fucker!
SETLIST: The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition), Superbeast, Meet the Creeper, Shake Your Ass-Smoke Your Grass, Living Dead Girl, More Human Than Human, Scum of the Earth, Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown, Never Gonna Stop (The Red, Red Kroovy), Well, Everybody’s Fucking in a U.F.O., House of 1000 Corpses, Thunder Kiss ’65/ Blitzkrieg Bop, We’re An American Band, Shadow of the Cemetary Man, Dragula
