The last time I saw horror / prog-rockers Goblin was in 2013 at Chicago’s Metro during their first tour of the United States. It was a sold out show and one of the best I saw all year, so I was keen on catching them again on their “Sound of Fear” tour, especially since the lineup included four of the five original members – Massimo Morante, Maurizio Guarini, Fabio Pignaetti, and Agostino Marangolo (along with Aidan Zammit replacing keyboardist and founding member Claudio Simonetti). They fact that they were playing in Thalia Hall – a former opera house – was a bonus.
Opening for them were the psychedelic / prog rockers Morricone Youth. My friends and I arrived in time to catch the last two songs of their set. Both were songs written as an alternate soundtrack to Night of the Living Dead. The film played behind them as they rocked out and it was a great set-up for both Goblin and the Halloween season.
Goblin came out to a welcoming, albeit smaller than I expected, crowd. I have no idea why more people weren’t at the show, unless the midweek date had something to do with it. Regardless, Goblin came ready to play and to terrify.
They played a lot of stuff they didn’t play on their last tour, including tracks from the bizarre giallo film Beyond the Darkness (complete with grisly mortuary scenes playing behind them which might’ve made an intoxicated woman in front of us so woozy that she needed assistance leaving the main floor), another giallo Massimo Morante called Killer on the Train, and the bizarre alien invasion film Contamination. I had no idea Goblin did the score for Contamination, so now I have extra incentive to track down that film.
Of course, they played tracks from their most famous film scores, starting with Profundo Russo (Deep Red).
They played not only the “Killer Doll” and main theme track, but also other songs from the film that you don’t hear often. They did the same with Tenebrae, which is a giallo about a killer in an opera house no less.
They did the same with their score to Suspiria, playing music from the beginning of the film and the creepy scene in which the lead characters first start to suspect an evil witch is living among them.
It was another excellent performance that got better as it crawled along like some horrible thing creeping out of the shadows. Goblin rarely get to the U.S., so don’t miss them.
Keep your mind open.
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