Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie
Freaks on Parade Tour 2024
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
September 15, 2024
Could you think of two better rockers to grand marshal a Freaks on Parade tour than Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie? On Sunday, the two, along with Filter and Ministry, carried their freak flags into Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion for what turned out to be a grindhouse of a concert.
Leading off the parade was Filter, with the Nine Inch Nails song “Head Like a Hole” playing them onto the stage – maybe because it’s a great song, or maybe in case anyone forgot that Filter frontman Richard Patrick was a one-time NIN guitarist.
Patrick, looking a bit like a cross between David Lynch and the late Matthew Perry, appeared dressed in black from head to toe, at one point saying of the Houston heat, “Where I’m from, this is known as ‘hotter than balls.’” Luckily, neither the temperature nor Patrick’s wardrobe selection hindered the band’s 30-minute, six-song set, which, aside from the weaker “Obliteration” off the band’s 2023 album The Algorithm, played like one-third of a “best of” album.
That “best of” set included, of course, “Take a Picture,” from 1999’s Title of Record. Rest assured, the track’s floating melodies and primal howls, which made the song Filter’s most commercially successful single, are still as alluring today as they were then.
Ministry was up next, and if anyone in that amphitheater wasn’t familiar with main man Al Jourgensen’s politically minded social commentary, they got a clue what they were in for when the phrase, “They’re eating our dogs, dogs, dogs…,” rang out during soundcheck.
The six-piece dove headlong into a raucous eight-song set, starting with three tracks from the band’s latest release, March’s Hopiumforthemasses: “B.D.E.,” “Goddamn White Trash,” and “Just Stop Oil.” As topical (and sample friendly) as ever, Jourgensen growled lines like “Horny little boys full of hormones and hate / Waging war on women ‘cause they can’t get a date” (in “B.D.E.,” or “Big Dick Energy”) and got a good “Goddamn White Trash” call-and-response going, too.
At one point, Jourgensen maintained, “You don’t want to hear this new shit. You want to hear the old stuff.” And while that’s almost always true, in this case, the “new shit” was going over really well. Musically, they were just as relentless as the classic Ministry tunes. Of course, no one is going to say no to “the old stuff,” especially when it includes headbangers like “N.W.O.” and “Just One Fix,” and perennial classic “Jesus Built My Hotrod.”
Up next, it was Alice Cooper’s turn, with the shock rocker cutting his way through a sky-high banner that declared, “Banned in Texas! Alice Cooper,” to a short snippet of “Lock Me Up.”
Cooper wasted no time jumping into several classics from his 60-year career, including a singalong of “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “I’m Eighteen.” Unsurprisingly, other hits like “Feed My Frankenstein” and “School’s Out,” heralded by a ringing bell and cleverly mashed up with Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2,” got big pops from the crowd as well.
Cooper’s set was the definition of theatricality. There were props and multiple costume changes (including the familiar, straightjacketed Cooper for “Ballad of Dwight Fry”). There were random acts of violence, such as an unwelcome photographer taking a mic stand to the gut during “Hey Stoopid” and an equally unwelcome fan getting a machete across their throat during “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)” by the man himself, Jason Voorhees. The song, by the way, is from the soundtrack to Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (i.e., the best Friday the 13th film). There was even a live boa constrictor with the best seat in the house for “Snakebite” – wrapped around Cooper’s shoulders and briefly resting on his head.
There was also Cooper’s wife, Sheryl, who appeared dressed as Marie Antoinette to chop her husband’s head off at the guillotine before parading the decapitated head around the stage. Classic.
Maybe the most pleasantly surprising element of Cooper’s set was the chemistry between Cooper and his band. Guitarist Nita Strauss, in particular, certainly had her share of fans, and a solo allowed her to bask in their adoration before the whole band jammed to “Black Widow.” The visible connection among the band members meant that it took eight songs for me to realize Cooper had yet to address the crowd. He did, of course, at the end of the set to introduce the band and wish the fans well. Specifically, he said, “May all your nightmares be horrific.”
Now, Cooper may have brought the theatricality, but Rob Zombie brought pure spectacle. Zombie emerged on a platform adorned with a skull to open his set with the anthemic “Demon Speeding.” The song, off Zombie’s sophomore album, The Sinister Urge, gave us our first look at the trippy visuals that would continue throughout his approximately hour-long set.
Really, from the overwhelming scale of the set to the larger-than-life-size monsters that roamed and towered over the stage, with almost every song conjuring up something that looked like it emerged from one of the creature features Zombie clearly loves, there was no shortage of things to look at. My personal favorite was the Krampus-y devil that vibed its way across the stage during “Lords of Salem.”
Also, in terms of visuals, Zombie used his own music videos well, like his Clockwork Orange-inspired video for “Never Gonna Stop (The Red, Red Kroovy).” All together, it enhanced the already vibrant, funhouse atmosphere that goes so well with the pounding rhythms and hard riffs found on songs like “The Satanic Rites of Blacula.” Vocally, Zombie sounded good and was as charismatic as ever. He was certainly feeling himself on stage.
Zombie’s setlist pulled multiple tracks off his crazy successful debut, Hellbilly Deluxe, in 1998: “Dragula,” “Living Dead Girl,” “Superbeast,” and “What Lurks on Channel X?” He also dipped into his White Zombie days, playing “More Human Than Human” and “Thunder Kiss ’65,” during the 14-song set. Despite the tight set, Zombie had time to give the hat off his head to a seven-year-old with a sign that said “Rob Zombie is the best” and to note, rightly, that everyone hates the song “Happy Birthday.” He also called for a brief reprieve from filming phones, which was modestly successful for one minute and 45 seconds of “a rock show with no phones.” At least he tried.
Random Note No. 1: There’s something kind of funny about Filter’s Patrick encouraging everyone to stand up and clap because “it’s a celebration of life” and the “it” he’s talking about is a song about getting blackout drunk (“Take a Picture”).
Random Note No. 2: Ginger Fish. Drum solo. (That’s it, that’s the note.)
Random Note No. 3: There were multiple attempts to pit us against Austin as an audience, to varying levels of success.
Setlist
Filter
You Walk Away
(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do
Obliteration
Take a Picture
Welcome to the Fold
Hey Man Nice Shot
Ministry
B.D.E.
Goddamn White Trash
Just Stop Oil
Stigmata
N.W.O.
Just One Fix
Thieves
Jesus Built My Hotrod
Alice Cooper
Lock Me Up
No More Mr. Nice Guy
I’m Eighteen
Under My Wheels
Billion Dollar Babies
Hey Stoopid
He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)
Snakebite
Feed My Frankenstein
Poison
Black Widow
Ballad of Dwight Fry
I Love the Dead
Elected
School’s Out
Rob Zombie
Demon Speeding
Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown
Feel So Numb
Well, Everybody’s Fucking in a U.F.O.
What Lurks on Channel X?
Superbeast
The Lords of Salem
Never Gonna Stop (The Red, Red Kroovy)
The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition)
The Satanic Rites of Blacula
More Human Than Human
Living Dead Girl
Thunder Kiss ’65
Dragula
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
