A Night of Gore and Glory: Ice Nine Kills at the Palladium
Known for their horror-movie-inspired metalcore and on-stage theatrics, US-American band Ice Nine Kills stopped at the Palladium in Cologne for their ‘A Work of Art’ tour, named after their 2024 single based on the Terrifier series. Triple support for this tour were TX2, Creeper and The Devil Wears Prada.
TX2 made the start at 6:30pm on the dot, leaving those who missed the last-minute time change stuck in the rainy queue. The overwhelmingly black-dressed metalheads and horror nerds (plus several Terrifier clowns) were greeted by singer Timothy Evan Thomas jumping into the crowd after just one song. He then climbed the Palladium columns while the mosh pit raged on. They played fan favourites such as ‘Vampire by Rumor’ and ‘Mad’, ending their short set with ‘I Would Hate Me Too’.
After a short break, English cult band Creeper took the stage. With their iconic dark sound and vampire getup, they fit the night’s theme perfectly. Both singer Will Gould and Hannah Hermione Greenwood impressed with melodious vocals, while guitarist Ian Miles delivered striking solos as mosh pits and crowd surfers surged across the hall. With neckbreakers like ‘Headstones’, the melancholic ‘The Ballad of Spook and Mercy’, and their celebrated closer ‘Cry To Heaven’, they offered a well-paced mix of slow and fast tracks.
Next up were The Devil Wears Prada, named after the 2005 novel. They immediately proved they are less about fashion and more about quality metal, performing well-known tracks such as ‘Ritual’, ‘Salt’ and ‘Sacrifice’ amid a beautifully arranged lighting setup that also set the scene for headliners Ice Nine Kills.
If the crowd had already gone wild for the first three bands, this was when the night truly began. Ice Nine Kills stepped out to ‘Meat & Greet’, a homage to Hannibal Lecter. With on-stage actors playing the parts of victims and famous murderers, and two screens introducing each song with both scenes from the music videos as well as cuts of ads and news programs, this was more than just a rock concert. This was a show and tell of all their favourite scary movies and they provided the soundtrack, and gore.
Charnas and Co proved that ‘Dead is better’ is not just a lyric from ‘Funeral Derangement’ but a mission statement. Track after track, costume after costume, staged murder after staged murder, they demonstrated how horror-movie devotion can become a full-scale spectacle rooted in metal’s darker aesthetics. After the first five songs came a break in tone: their ‘Walking on Sunshine’ cover, complete with a grinning sun in sunglasses (still wielding a knife — this is an INK show), had the whole hall dancing. Probably the only performance of the night you can show your folks at home without having to explain that yes, Spencer Charnas just pretended to slit someone’s throat on stage, no this is just a show, yes I enjoy this.
Of course, everything is done with very obvious props and silly gags, giving a sense of humor to otherwise rather gruesome themes. In between songs, the frontman thanked his talented band members and friends for their continued skill.
On ‘Ex-Mørtis’, the crowd became the chorus of The Evil Dead, chanting “The living will descend and the dead will rise from way below”. Charnas then thanked actor Tony Todd before beginning the slower, but not less powerful, Candyman-inspired ‘Farewell II Flesh’.
After another ska cover, this time ‘The Impression That I Get’ by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, they went back to the scheduled programming: ‘A Grave Mistake’, a homage to the cult classic The Crow got the fans screaming along as if they themselves had experienced the pain and loss the story conveys. For ‘The Laugh Track’, Charnas donned his bloody Joker costume, and ended their set before the encore with ‘IT Is The End’. Complete with a childlike figure in a yellow raincoat, paperboat and red balloons in hand, the frontman stepped into the role of yet another clown.
Since the tour is of course called ‘A Work of Art’, there was one famous clown still missing from the stage. After playing ‘The American Nightmare’, there he was, Art the Clown from the movie Terrifier. Dressed in Bavarian lederhosen and matching shirt, he took the place of a Santa Claus actor on stage, his sack of presents one of mutilated body parts - a true gory showdown at the very end. Creeper’s Hannah Greenwood joined the stage to lend her voice to the female singing part and the Terrifier clown spent some time on his own drum solo, with Charnas concluding the song (and the night) with ‘The art of dying brings me to life [...] and you’re terrified now.’