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Article by Ludovica Ciccarelli

“Come on guys, Misfits on Halloween! What a perfect night!” With this words Rob Vannice, frontman of the band Juicehead, commenced his first talk to the audience of the Devil’s Rain Tour, in New York City, last night. Truth said, no words could best describe the experience of this particular Halloween night I have fortunately witness.
I have to admit that I went to this concert mostly as a fan, with the face painted as the crimson ghost and the bloodier t-shirt I found in my closet. I found myself a great place in front of the Misfit par excellence and I patiently waited for the next hour, while the crowd overflew the pit till five minutes to the concert, when nobody was able to move anymore.
The venue, decorated as it was for Halloween, with its huge webs, fake graves and skeletons hanging from the ceiling, was perfect to play host to the Jersey band and their fans.
The opening act, the Chicago based band Juicehead, went on stage (fifteen minutes late, while the fans were champing at the bit) and the crowd exploded in a huge mosh pit, headed by a gorilla in Converse All Star. Anyway the band didn’t look like was making the people in the pit go and buy their new album, How to Sail A Sinking Ship, any moment. Nobody was singing along and very few people were moving, apart from the mosh.
The atmosphere, though, changed radically in better as soon as the Misfits’ stage was revealed. It looked like the band wanted to recreate the past video shootings they had, with skulls-o-lanterns, huge lamps, white smoke and skeletons on their microphones’ poles.
As the punk legends they are, the band had a terrible acoustic – though, that was the venue’s fault, I later found out – with too loud guitars and voices impossible to hear, making the songs pretty difficult to identify at first, without the help of the lyrics. The crowd managed anyway, while the real blood started to be mixed with the fake one already on people’s faces and clothes.
Living up their reputation, the Misfits created a huge show, playing tracks from each one of their album, from songs such as the most recent “Jack The Ripper” to the 1977 dated song “She,” and amounting to a total of almost forty songs, comprehensive also of their most famous compositions such as “Scream!”, “American Psycho”, and “Dig Up Her Bones”.
Throughout the concert, the crowd was moshing like there was no tomorrow, crowd surfing up to the stage, and stage diving back down without the aid of the security guards, standing at the edges of the stage. There was, though, a guy who, during “Father,” accidentally fell on Jerry Only and its mike, taking off the Devastator’s shoulder strap. Jerry stopped playing to throw the guy on the floor, kick him and then try to suffocate him with his arm. Security guards had to intervene to set the guy free and the song was repeated completely. Jerry later commented at the microphone that “it was a joke.”
After that episode, the concert managed to toe the line – mostly thanks to the cautionary hand Jerry was showing to anybody willing to crowd surf in his direction – till the end, at least. In fact, when the concert came now to an end and Dez and Erik have left, another guy managed to land on the stage and tried to hug Jerry. The result, though, was Jerry taking his head in one hand and slam it against the stage edge, with more problems for the crew members to deal with and a probable concussion for the guy.
To reconcile with his New York fans, Jerry decided to stay some more time on stage, to held hands and high five any fan who’s still there and willing to, and also to sign every impossible object he finds on his way.
What else should I say, the concert was as great as expected. I’m sure when I’ll be older, I’ll say that “I remember Halloween!”

Rating 9/10, awesome night!

Misfits’ Setlist:

1. The Devil’s Rain
2. Vivid Red
3. Land Of The Dead
4. The Black Hole
5. Twilight Of The Dead
6. Curse of the Mummy’s Hand
7. Cold In Hell
8. Unexplained
9. Dark Shadows
10. Father
11. Jack The Ripper
12. Static Age
13. Bullet
14. Children in Heat
15. Nike A Go Go
16. She
17. Abominable Dr. Phibes
18. American Psycho
19. Shining
20. Dig Up Her Bones
21. Scream!
22. Ghost of Frankenstein
23. Death Ray
24. The Monkey’s Paw
25. Halloween
26. Skulls
27. Where Eagles Dare
28. Hatebreeders
29. We Bite
30. Death Comes Ripping
31. Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?
32. All Hell Breaks Loose
33. We Are 138

Encore:
34. Descending Angel
35. Hybrid Moments
36. Attitude
37. Astro Zombies
38. I Turned Into A Martian
39. Die, Die My Darling