Rob Zombie @ Hammerstein Ballroom

NEW YORK, NY—I’ll be honest. I had a serious case of the Tuesdays and was in no mood to leave my warm house and trudge into the cold city for a show. While gathering my photo equipment I’d enviously look over at my napping cat and quietly curse his charmed, lazy lifestyle. But, no matter how much I wanted to hide under some blankets and hibernate, I knew I had to catch Rob Zombie and hopefully hear a few songs from his forthcoming album, Hellbilly Deluxe 2.

The first and last time I saw Rob Zombie live was when he performed on the second stage of Ozzfest in 2005. So it was awesome to finally see a full Zombie set with all fixings of a real light show which included large projector and LED screens flashing clips of classic “B” horror flicks and, occasionally, song lyrics. It all made for a psychotic metal sing-along that got the entire crowd jumping, moshing, crowd surfing and any other metal show crowd activity you can think of. Zombie and Co. certainly didn’t sit through this set. While shooting some snap shots at the start of the set I found it nearly impossible to catch Rob (or anyone else in the band for that matter) in any one spot for more than half a second. Combine that with the constantly changing lighting scheme and flashing screens and you’ve got part of the recipe for a rockin’ show.

The other part of that recipe, of course, is the music. The set offered a little bit of everything from Zombie’s catalogue but concentrated mostly on Hellbilly Deluxe 1 and Sinister Urge. The Zombie faithful also got to sink their teeth into new songs “Sick Bubble-Gum” and “What?!” from the soon-to-released Hellbilly Deluxe 2. I’ve always been more fond of White Zombie than Rob Zombie solo, so it was a special treat to hear “Supercharger Heaven” and “Thunderkiss ‘65.” The high point of the show for me was the massive robot that took the stage during “More Human Than Human.” Perhaps the show would have been made better by including more robots. Other than that, the show did more than enough to break up the usual Tuesday night snore-fest.