On the Freaks on Parade tour with Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper as co-headliners, every night could be Halloween.

Zombie, who writes and directs horror films in addition to his music career, and Cooper, the godfather of shock rock, presented their unique but complementary takes on the horror business to an audience of about 13,000 at the Pavilion at Star Lake on Tuesday night.

First of all, a Rob Zombie concert can be a sensory overload experience. The huge video screens offered a variety of pulsating animations, horror movie clips, anime, images of cult leaders and much more in a true multimedia experience. And that’s without even mentioning the pyrotechnics, falling sparks and light show. (If strobe lights are a problem, you may want to avoid this concert in the future.)

Zombie, silhouetted behind a screen, began the show on a raised platform emblazoned with his name, with drummer Ginger Fish standing even higher behind him. The band opened with “Demon Speeding,” followed by “Super-Charger Heaven,” the first of several classics from White Zombie, the band he formed before going solo.

Zombie used a variety of mic stands, from a goat’s head with flashing red eyes to a gnarled, six-armed skeleton to a ten-pointed star. Guitarist Mike Riggs and bassist Rob “Blasko” Nicholson had matching Nosferatu mic stands.

An explosive “Feel So Numb” led into the funky but strange “Well, Everybody’s (expletive) in a UFO,” which featured the first of several oversized puppets, this time a gorilla body with the head of a deep-sea diver, not to mention a giant inflatable robot behind the drums. Others that appeared later included a demonic red creature in “The Lords of Salem” and another demonic creature for “The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition).”

Related

• Staind guitarist Mike Mushok talks about Pittsburgh anecdotes, the new album and the tour
• Green Day bring punk and arena rock together for a spectacle in Pittsburgh
• 2024 concert calendar for the Pittsburgh region

Zombie closed the song with a sizzling “More Human Than Human” by White Zombie, followed by “Living Dead Girl,” which featured Zombie kicking hard while giant balloons fell into the crowd.

“Have you outgrown headbanging?” asked the 59-year-old zombie. “Come on! I’m older than you and I haven’t outgrown it.”

This led to Riggs breaking in the riff from White Zombie’s final song, “Thunder Kiss ’65,” while Zombie donned a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey with the number 65 and Zombie on the name tag. (Sorry, Erik Karlsson!) He closed out the night of supernatural and over-the-top metal with his biggest anthem, “Dragula.”

More from @RobZombie at @Pav_StarLake pic.twitter.com/SLbLI6GugT

— Mike Palm (@MikePalmMedia) 4 September 2024

Cooper, on the other hand, seemed downright reserved compared to Zombie.

After applying for “Lock Me Up” through a newspaper with the headline “Banned in Pennsylvania,” the 76-year-old played four classic rock standards from the 1970s: “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” “I’m Eighteen,” “Under My Wheels” and “Billion Dollar Babies.”

Cooper’s band improvised and struck rock star poses, but also showed off their chops. The three guitarists – Ryan Roxie, Tommy Henriksen and Nita Strauss – played guitar and took turns soloing, with Strauss getting a solo of his own that segued into “Black Widow Jam.”

Throughout the evening, Cooper used a variety of props, from a cane to a riding crop, a crutch to a saber. During “Hey Stoopid,” he stabbed a paparazzi photographer with his microphone stand while a ninja escorted him off the stage. Jason Vorhees from the Friday the 13th film series made an appearance to stab a fan during “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask).” During “Feed My Frankenstein,” a giant Frankenstein monster took the stage.

Would a Cooper show be complete without a snake appearance? He performed “Snakebite” with a boa constrictor around his shoulders.

The theatrics increased with “Ballad of Dwight Fry,” in which Cooper appeared in a straitjacket before a mock guillotine beheading while his wife Sheryl played the role of Marie Antoinette. Still in the straitjacket, Cooper moved on to “Elected,” with American flags on either side and red, white and blue streamers thrown into the crowd. (Cooper, coincidentally, launched a satirical presidential campaign that summer.)

Cooper closed the concert with a celebratory “School’s Out,” which included a snippet of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” and band introductions (with bassist Chuck Garric throwing a Terrible Towel into the crowd). As bubbles rose from both sides of the stage, confetti-filled balloons floated through the crowd, and Cooper seemed eager to pop them.

More from @alicecooper at @Pav_StarLake pic.twitter.com/e1bcuazMtT

— Mike Palm (@MikePalmMedia) 4 September 2024

Ministry, one of the forefathers of industrial metal, has included several of its classics from the late 1980s and early 1990s as well as a few new songs (from 2021 and 2024).

Founder Al Jourgensen, who jokingly complained about the music of the transition – “James Taylor before a Ministry concert? I don’t know. I kind of freaked out” – gave up his facial piercings and his trademark dreadlocks earlier this year and opted for a more gunslinger look with a black cowboy hat on Tuesday.

In their 40 minutes, Ministry unleashed a wall of sound with thumping drums in “Just One Fix,” the hard thrash of “Thieves,” and “Stigmata,” which showed their influence on Nine Inch Nails. They closed the concert with “Jesus Built My Hotrod,” the band’s first commercial hit.

Church service in front of Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie at Star Lake pic.twitter.com/i2fxoMdSHC

— Mike Palm (@MikePalmMedia) 4 September 2024

Filter, also dressed in all black, opened the show under a blazing sun. During their 30-minute set, they focused mostly on heavier songs, but then took things a little easier with their biggest hit, “Take a Picture.”

“Half of you are thinking, ‘That’s filter?’” says frontman Richard Patrick.

Patrick, who formed the band in Cleveland before moving to Chicago and now Los Angeles, had kind words for Pittsburgh – a far cry from a 1995 show where he referred to the city as the “Pitts puke bomber.”

To introduce the evening’s somber theme, they closed the show with “Hey Man, Nice Shot,” based on the radio-broadcast suicide of Pennsylvania State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer.

.@OfficialFilter Opening of the Freaks on Parade Tour at @Pav_StarLake pic.twitter.com/Ual5REbUql

— Mike Palm (@MikePalmMedia) 3 September 2024