Touring in support of their "Best of the Best" compilation, Blackie Lawless and his band of marauders took center stage in what for many must have seemed like a Sunday matinee-hitting the stage 9pm sharp for this Saturday night appearance!

For a visual band, W.A.S.P. had up to this point been a relatively scarce commodity in the tour circuit and it was good to finally have them back in the area in what was a true blood and guts performance.

In following a similar pattern that's surfaced recently to open the show with a medley of tunes, they managed to throw us all a curve after the expected introduction to "Helldorado" by going into "Inside the Electric Circus" about two minutes later!

Capping it off with an old favorite from "The Crimson Idol" days, "Chainsaw Charlie (Murders in the New Morgue)" of course, it was evident the band was not prepared to sit on their laurels and perform the usual glut of past hits and make this a two hour nostalgia trip.

There was plenty of it however, but they blended the old and new quite professionally and captured a crisp, clean sound throughout most of the night where the only complaint anyone might've offered is that the sound could've been juiced just a little bit higher!

Nonetheless, Lawless and co. seemed to have really settled in together these last few years and the recent translations of proven staples as "L.O.V.E. Machine," "Wild Child," and "The Real Me" really brought the original intensity into a new life of its own.

The interesting thing about this Mulcahy's place is that it's got kind of an awkward setup. The moment you enter its like walking into Cheers-you got this oval shaped bar which is proceeded by another, then the stage with a minimal amount of standing room.

So to comply with the necessities of bringing live acts that could actually draw five or six hundred people, they widened the space and created another section to the right of the stage that goes a good ways back.

Well the point to all this you're wondering?

It's probably not what a typical concert venue would look like and to have a band of this magnitude with the controversial reputation they tote with them from city to city was mildly unexpected.

And then there was the headline act at 11:00 that went by, Pete Moss and the Fertilizers-or something to that effect. Yeah, it all made sense-but all the better for W.A.S.P. to tear up the place and hopefully leave a deep black hole in the stage where Les Moss and the Crabgrass were due to inhabit next.

The band could well have done it too with the amount of explosives popping off throughout their set. The capper featured a couple of old tricks that Blackie brought back to really make this a memorable occasion.

Toward the end after the lingering notes of "I Wanna Be Somebody" withered away in the distance, they go into a screamer from the "Helldorado" album, that coincided with him strapping on that flaming codpiece that first gained notoriety on the much subtler "Inside the Electric Circus" tour and out came the sparks flooding the crowd as "Dirty Balls" played in the background!

Interspersed throughout the evening, the band went down their list and did solid versions that featured "Animal" of course, and surprisingly back to back ballads in the form of "Sleeping in the Fire" followed by "Damnation Angels" which at first listen didn't seem to go together but somehow it just worked.

Thankfully, no "Doctor" was needed tonight, if you get my drift-he's getting old and slow anyway and with all the recent headlines… Prior to capping off the evening with everyone's favorite drinking song, we got to step back in time and watch Chris' poolside bottle guzzling exploits that made '87's "The Decline of Western Civilization the phenomena it is today!

And in person, the sights and sounds of gurgling blood and white feathers leaving the place in an absolute mess before the lights went off and the comfortable sounds of Marc Anthony and Santana drove home the reality that it was only 11:00 and it wasn't worth sticking around for the headliner!

W.A.S.P. definitely appear to be back on track in reestablishing themselves as the world's state of the art shock-rock performers even though this was slightly tame by comparison when examining the material they came up with on their last couple of tours-and probably by design as this didn't seem to be the place to go totally overboard.

But they went far enough to exhibit the unparalleled on stage flare ups they've always been expected to produce right at the perfect time-now old Mr. Gore can find an excuse to rekindle that passion his wife built up in the past to fuel a brand new political agenda!