Calling this a concert review is misleading. Rob Zombie, for love of shtick, was more than musical performance. The hits of White Zombie and Rob’s solo career were there. But what salvaged the set were the extras. If the music seems a little stale (as a good portion of it was – heard live, formulaic songs get indistinguishably redundant), pay attention to the pyro bursts or watch the video images ranging from ’50s stag film and go-go girls to clips of Charles Manson, Clockwork Orange and horror films. Need more over-stimulation? How about occasional “dance” sequences from robots, monsters and a visibly apathetic woman? There’s the huge demon head that served as a drum riser. Oh, yeah, music was being played too.

While Zombie commanded early on, his mood shifted by mid-set. Here, the remaining performance fell into detached autopilot. The crowd might have had something to do with that as sing-a-longs fell flat and after-song responses were subdued at best. As well, flow was broken between some songs from the multiple 30-second video interludes including the shameless plug of Zombie’s film, “House of 1000 Corpses.” Still, my low attention span enjoyed the dumb-fun spectacle of it all.

Newcomer Sinisstar faced the unenviable task of opening to folks that had never heard the band before. Its brief set was a training course in starting out – enthusiastic performance, rock star poses, pandering for applause and a reminder to “Please buy our record when it comes out.” The mix wasn’t distinct and very bass-heavy, making what could have been more successful, like the catchy “White Noise” or driving “First Day of Nowhere” fairly nondescript. Lots of programming, too – Edgy was barely heard in comparison to the triggered backing vocals. Still, the crowd played along because the band has appeal. It wasn’t a great set but not bad either. Grade: Zombie: B, Sinisstar: B-