I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: May 24, 2025] Ice Nine Kills: Night 1

My son and I have seen Ice Nine Kills three times and while their shows don’t differ all that much, the theatrics of the spectacle are always wonderful.

And here was a chance to see any of the songs that we hadn’t already seen before, because each night of the Silver Screamathon featured one of their albums played in its entirety.

The first night was The Silver Scream–their first foray into singing about horror movies.  The stage was set up in a very cool way with a giant head behind the drumset (a combo of Jason from Friday the 13th and Michael Myers from Halloween) with a big IX on their foreheads.  There was also a large neon IX that changed colors throughout the show.   The drum head looked like a circus with red and white stripes in a circular pattern.

After the previous band we waited until Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand played over the speakers.  And soon after, the band came out on stage and wasted no time jumping into The American Nightmare.  Despite my best efforts, I wound up being near a pole so I missed some stuff that happened on the left side of the stage and Spencer does love to use the whole stage.  I moved around a bit and eventually was okay with where I was.  But for the most part I could see fine and the band sounded great.

The American Nightmare is one of their catchier songs and singer Spencer walks around with a Freddy Kreuger glove on as he sings.  Every song is visually interesting.  Thank God It’s Friday brings out Jason from Friday the 13th (and his mom).  And midway through the song Jason did indeed axe someone on stage (it is choreographed so well).

This tour also featured some horns, which was a surprise (and which were kind of lost in all of the noisy guitars).

Up next was Halloween, and once again Spencer was in costume.

Between some songs (when a big costume change was happening) they would play snippets of their videos or notifications about what song/movie might be next.  It made the whole night a theatrical event.  And speaking of theatrics, when Savages started, the guys from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out complete with chainsaw and face mask.

Although most of the songs are fairly scary (I mean, people are chopped up on stage), for Rocking the Boat, they bring out a comical, inflatable shark that runs around on stage.

Having seen them a number of times, I knew there were only a handful of songs I hadn’t seen them do live.  So it was cool to see them do Enjoy Your Slay, complete with the recreation of the Here’s Johnny scene from The Shining (yup, a door and a axe are involved).  They also played Freak Flag which was the final song from that first album that I hadn’t heard live.

It’s always weird to see Santa Claus at a show.  Especially when Santa is kind of evil (okay, not just kind of evil).

It feels like they have to end every show with IT is the end, because, well, duh.  But for this show, it simply ends the album.  So they had their victim come out with red balloons.  Meanwhile, Spencer donned the scary clown mask and dealt with the balloons.

So what do you do for an encore if you have played the album and the following night is the next album?  Well, they played a song from the deluxe version of the next night’s album–Meat and Greet is for The Silence of the Lambs and of course they had a Hannibal Lecter wheeled out.

They followed it with a song from their first album Safe is Just a Shadow (before they fully embraced their concept), although the song is still good and scary.

They ended the night with Work of Art, a new song that is being used in the film Terrifier 3.  I’m not familiar with the franchise, but he main character is a tall clown dressed in black and white.  I’m guessing he’s a comic scary character because they were doing some wacky things on stage–playing football with a baby (attached to an umbilical cord)and then eventually, Terrifier kicked out the drummer and ended the song playing some serious drum work.

All in all is was a super fun show.  My son was in the pit and said it was a decent and respectful pit, but still lots of fun.  It got me very psyched for night two.

§ single (2024)
♥ Welcome to Horrorwood: Under Fire edition (2023)
$$ The Silver Scream 2: Welcome to Horrorwood (2021)
$ The Silver Scream (2018)
ß Every Trick in the Book (2015)
⊗ The Predator Becomes the Prey (2014)
♦ Safe is Just a Shadow (2010)