It’s truthful to say that in case you are somebody as deeply in love with the worlds of punk rock and heavy steel, and their relationship with the worlds of the horrific and the arcane, then September 18, 2016, was a reasonably particular date for you. It was on at the present time, at Douglas Park, in Chicago, Illinois, that, after lastly burying the hatchet, unique Misfits Jerry Solely and Glenn Danzig, alongside Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, took the stage at Riot Fest to play the songs which have lengthy since handed into folklore. What may presumably prime that, then? Oh, perhaps simply Rob Zombie additionally sitting on the invoice, performing White Zombie’s Astro-Creep: 2000 stay in its entirety.
Take heed to Astro-Creep: 2000 Reside on Apple Music and Spotify.
Additionally on the line-up that day was SoCal punk veterans Unhealthy Faith, Sacramento post-metal legends Deftones and a reformed Sleater-Kinney, the massively influential all-girl indie trio, complementing the mouth-watering prospect of seeing the returning icons of horror-punk. Filling the spot instantly earlier than Misfits took to the stage, nonetheless, was the person that had taken the 80s schlock-punk of the headliners and ramped it up, each aesthetically and sonically, over the many years of their absence.
Having Rob Zombie open for Misfits simply is sensible. The instructor and the pupil collectively in a single gloriously Technicolor, orgasmic, sensory overload. A celebration in extra of extra. However, for such a exceptional set of circumstances, Rob Zombie wanted to do one thing out of the odd to mark the event. Naturally, he made life troublesome for the headliners by working by the 1995 album that actually put him on the map.
We may go into nice salivating element about simply why Astro-Creep: 2000 is the nice White Zombie (and presumably Rob Zombie) second, however we’re certain you’re all aware of the grindhouse, sleaze, industrialized throbs, and chainsaw riffing on “Grease Paint And Monkey Brains,” “Extra Human Than Human” or “Tremendous-Charger Heaven.” Mainly, it’s a basic, and if seeing Misfits stay wasn’t sufficient, seeing probably the greatest albums of the 90s performed to completion turned the important into the unmissable.
In fact, as a lot as thousands and thousands of us would have liked to have been there, we couldn’t all discover our approach into that area in Chicago on that individual day. However Zombie’s efficiency was captured as a historic doc and launched, slightly below two years later, underneath the guise of Astro-Creep: 2000 Reside.
It’s a document that proves two issues: firstly, that basic albums actually are timeless. The songs nonetheless pop and champagne and grind in all of the locations that they did when initially launched in ’95. The best way Zombie and his band profession out of the traps on the opening of “El Phantasmo And The Rooster-Run Blast-O-Rama” would give any of the fashionable riff masters a bloody nostril, and “Electrical Head Pt 1 (The Agony)” nonetheless sounds leaps and bounds forward of most modern steel bands.
The second factor it proves is simply how a lot tighter, quicker, and extra uncompromising Rob Zombie has develop into over time. There’s barely a pause for breath between songs, to the purpose the place you may virtually hear the viewers struggling to catch up because the vitality of the music tears off into the horizon. “Extra Human Than Human” is virtually performed at twice the pace of its recorded unique, and its electrical pulse has gone from being a soundscape within the background to a sonic volcano that sounds prefer it’s rumbling the core of the Earth.
Not like most stay albums, Astro-Creep: 2000 Reside does that rarest of issues: it really captures not only a nice band with nice songs, however an incredible second in time and an precise occasion on the earth of heavy music. It’s extremely uncertain that anybody will overlook about what occurred at Riot Fest in 2016; its place within the mythology of heavy music is most undoubtedly assured. But it surely’s listening to that day, that band, on that kind; that setlist, from an artist stepping away from what’s normally anticipated of him and giving the folks one thing genuinely memorable, that makes Astro-Creep: 2000 Reside such a brilliantly dizzy deal with for followers.
The message to Misfits was clear: comply with that!
Take heed to Astro-Creep: 2000 Reside on Apple Music and Spotify.