Rock and Roll with a Side of Fries: Experiencing A McDonald's Themed Black Sabbath Cover Band on Psychedelics

I arrived at the Vogue Theater thirty minutes before doors hoping to snag a primo place in line, but a queue of about fifty people had already formed down the street. Night fell and the chilling October air blew in as the call time came and passed. An hour after the doors should have opened the line was growing hostile. A swarm of concertgoers in clown makeup pulsated on the sidewalk down College Avenue. A garrison of deadheads, freaks, and metalheads prepared to storm The Vogue. Broad Ripple Avenue would be engulfed in a riot. Fire would rain from the skies until finally, the beast reached a McDonald's where a proper offering could be made to the gods of drive-thru metal. 

Just in the nick of time, the doors swung open. Burly men with sleeves of tattoos began checking tickets and performing pat-downs as fast as they could. My group lurched in behind a flock of fresh-faced twenty-one-year-olds who wouldn't quit yapping about attending their first real show. In the shadowy corners underneath the loft bar, I popped my edibles. The crowd mobbed the bar in the center of the room, seeming like hordes of the undead undulating in synchronized motions. On the walls around me, dozens of framed autographed pictures of previous performers stared at me with glassy eyes.

Thanks to the liquor-thirsty swarm at the bar, the pit was mostly empty allowing us to get spots up against the guard rail separating the stage from the crowd. Before us was a demilitarized zone where photographers could get stunning close-ups of the act without fear of being hammered in the temple by some shady character and relieved of their equipment. 

Another hour passed with little activity. The theater was packed, the pit was a sardine tin filled with angry thrashers already inebriated to the point of spilling their drinks. The reserved tables in the loft were all full of the Broad Ripple music community's finest. The crowd was unparalleled by any act I had seen at The Vogue before, wildly impressive for a parody band. 

The rumbling chatter was interrupted when a sleek, reflective humanoid figure appeared on the screen behind the stage. It moved its arms in a creeping, calculated way like a mime while a Vengaboys song rattled the fixtures around the venue. A man in a gray t-shirt and cargo shorts came out on stage with his band. Without a word, they slammed ahead into what can only be described as yelling over a beat. The band, Playboy Manbaby, is a homage to 80s punk with a vaporwave twist. 

The crowd was whipped into a frenzy by the raw energy Manbaby was able to generate. People raged, jumped, and thrashed about, shaking the floors with a delightful rhythm. I couldn't understand a word of the songs they played but the passion came through clear as day.

My edibles began to kick in during this set. The colors inside the theater became vibrant, making even a dingy bar counter look like a glowing neon light. As I went up the music lowered to a steady beat. The front man addressed us though I can't say exactly what about. Suddenly he vaulted over the guardrail into the pit. The crowd parted, opening a small circle for him to move around in. I stood less than ten feet away, my heartbeat in time with the kick drum as the frontman taught us how to count or something. When he felt like he had adequately educated us he climbed back over the rail leaving a small mosh pit where he had been standing. Manbaby played two more songs, both of which took the tempo down a scale more than the last, letting us know their set was coming to an end. When it was over they disappeared in a cloud of stagehands and equipment.

 The next act came out just as I was about to begin losing my cool. However, the sight of several androids in full war regalia didn't ease my condition. The Cybertronic Spree, a band consisting of five members who dress up in robot costumes, took the stage. Their set consisted mostly of covers of 80s classic rock hits. They played well above the average I would expect from a cover band. Unfortunately, I was more concerned with their gimmick than I was with their performance. Their costumes had a stunning amount of detail to them. They could have easily passed for some terror out of Boston Dynamics. A horrifying technological marvel that had eradicated their creators, leveling the warehouse lab they were built in and then setting off to conquer humanity through rock and roll. 

The lights went down and orange beams began flashing from behind the stage as the band tore into a cover of “Immigrant Song”. The light cast shadows around the venue, splattering the walls with monolithic robotic figures. As the frontwoman wailed I drifted into a spiraling world of colors and confusion. The melodic war cry was haunting in the dim theater, lit only by tangerine lowlights that glowed like smoldering fires in the land of the ice and snow. They finished their set with a cover of “Barracuda” that far surpassed even the original studio recordings. This was made all the more impressive by the fact that these automatons were wailing in bulky costumes that forced them into stiff, jerky movements. The end of their set was slightly disappointing: a selfie with the crowd then they left.

As they walked off-stage a large red curtain was hung up from two poles on opposite sides of the stage. The covers that had been thus far obscuring the tops of these poles were removed showing that they were pikes atop which two clown heads were staked; mockeries of a well-known fast food icon with glimmering red eyes. Smoke billowed up from behind the shroud, not like a smoke machine was going, more like someone was hitting their vape rig and blowing the clouds up into the air. Within twenty minutes the curtain fell and the final act appeared. Three band members came out: Slayer MacCheese, Grimalice, and the Catburglar. They took their instruments in their oversize-costumed hands and traded a look as though each was making sure the others were braced for the entrance of their vocalist. Ronald Osbourne soon joined them, running out in a straightjacket snapping his jaws at the crowd. Their trusty stage hand (and employee of the month according to Ronald) let him out of the restraint. Immediately the band broke out into flawless renditions of Black Sabbath classics accompanied by stage gags. 

Lasers blasted the clouds of smoke billowing out from the clown heads. As the band peeled into “Sweet Beef” a new character made its way out onto the stage. What was essentially a pom pom on legs hopped out in front of my section of the pit. The creature doused us in water from some pump inside its suit-- which based on later events I can guess was actually a ketchup bottle. It thoroughly soaked me and the surrounding audience then jumped back off stage. I wrung out my corduroy jacket letting the drips fall to the floor in a dazzling display of fractals that trickled to the rhythm of “N.I.B.B.L.E.”

Not long after the pom poms disappearance another band member joined the group for their next track, “The Lizard.” That is both the name of the song and the new band member. At this point, the handful of 32-ounce long islands and squares of DMT chocolate I had downed before the show were catching up with me so once again details become spotty. The band explained that the lizard was some kind of mutated gecko although where they found him escapes me. What I do remember clearly is him blowing the harps in such a way that could make Eric Oblander feel like a poser. How he did this through the latex lizard mask I don`t know but it was incredible. 

The concert rolled on with a few more tricks. During “Frying Pan” Ronald whipped out an actual frying pan in which he successfully managed to flip a patty several times during the song. He then pushed a button on its side, causing a plume of flames to shoot out of the pan, which he flung around like some kind of fire-breathing clown. Later on their “employee of the month” wheeled out a grill which Ronald flipped burgers on for the next several songs. 

Near the end of the set one of the band's backstage hands got an idea in his head. During “Chicken for the Slaves,” the guy ran full sprint across the stage then attempted to dive into the audience. We all cleared right out of his way letting him slam into the solid wood floor so hard I could feel the thud over Catburglar’s drum fills. He lay there for a moment like a cadaver, unmoving with several of us staring and snickering. Then he rose like a revenant and limped backstage in shame. Not long after, Osbourne made a much more successful attempt at taking a dive, pulling out a hamburger-shaped innertube which he used to surf around the crowd. 

The band finished up their set with a cover of “Paranoid”, “Pair-a-Buns,” a few more puns, and the intro to “Crazy Train.” As I left The Vogue I was forced to reconcile with the fact that this band which I only came to see for a laugh had completely blown every other show I had ever seen out of the water. Acts that have sold out entire arenas like Van Halen, Def Leppard, and Paramore couldn’t compare to these four Californians with a goofy gimmick. I would like to see Kenny Gradney pull off a bass riff that heavy in a full-body Grimace costume. Drive-thru metal is no flash-in-the-pan bit to draw in crowds. It is a serious rock and roll force to be reckoned with. It won’t be taking over the scene at your local record store anytime soon but I could easily see Mac Sabbath's stardom grow far beyond its current place. Keep an eye out for them next time they’re in your town, this is a show you can’t afford to miss.