Photos and Review by Chris Besaw
As the last light bled out behind the trees at Darien Lake Amphitheater on Sunday night, the air itself seemed to thicken. The late-summer heat hung heavy and still, like the pause before something wicked arrives. Then the Freaks on Parade rolled in—Orgy, The HU, Marilyn Manson, and Rob Zombie—turning a quiet Western New York amphitheater into a temporary carnival of the damned.
Orgy opened the gates. Their set cut through the dusk with sharp, industrial teeth. The band sounded locked-in and restless, feeding off the early crowd that had gathered under the growing shadows. When they slammed into their cover of “Blue Monday,” the amphitheater answered like something waking up. Bodies moved, voices rose, and for a moment the place felt less like a concert and more like a ritual just beginning.
Orgy setlist
Suckerface
Dangerous Lyfe / Gender
Slept So Long / Pantomime
Fiction (Dreams in Digital)
Ghost / Dissention
Stitches
Blue Monday (medleyed with “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”)
The HU followed, and the temperature dropped another degree. I’ve seen them before, and they always bring that strange, ancient power—throat singing, horsehead fiddles, and riffs that sound like they were pulled from the steppe at midnight. They didn’t just play; they summoned. The crowd answered every call, fists in the air, voices rising with the war chants. By the time “Wolf Totem” and “This Is Mongol” hit, the amphitheater felt possessed. The HU turned the night into something older and hungrier.
The HU setlist
Lost Soul
Horsemen
Shadow
Grey Hun
The Real You
Yuve Yuve Yu
Wolf Totem
This Is Mongol
Then the lights went cold and Marilyn Manson took the stage. I hadn’t seen him since that 2018 co-headlining show at Lakeview Amphitheater, and whatever ghosts he carried then have clearly been put to work. He opened with “Exit Wounds”—a song that still feels like a knife sliding between the ribs—and the entire place locked in. “Angel with the Scabbed Wings” followed, and the amphitheater erupted, a sea of bodies rising like the undead answering a summons. Between songs he spoke to the crowd, mentioning how much he loves New York, the words landing with a strange, intimate gravity in the dark. He was in full command: voice strong, presence unsettling, every gesture deliberate. Behind him the current band—Tim Sköld on bass, Gil Sharone on drums, Piggy D. on rhythm guitar, and Nick Annis on lead—sounded like a machine built for nightmares. It was a performance that felt less like a concert and more like a black mass held under the open sky.
Marilyn Manson setlist
Bela Lugosi’s Dead (tape intro)
Exit Wound
Disposable Teens
Angel with the Scabbed Wings
Great Big White World
This Is the New Shit
Dried Up, Tied and Dead to the World
Front Toward Enemy
The Nobodies
Tourniquet (with “Diary of a Dope Fiend” interlude)
The Dope Show
As Sick as the Secrets Within
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
mOBSCENE
The Beautiful People
After a brief, uneasy quiet, Rob Zombie arrived like the final act of a horror film. He stormed the stage with “F.T.W. 84,” slid straight into the venomous “Tarantula” from The Great Satan, and then detonated “Superbeast.” The set never blinked—classics and new material colliding in a blur of lights, smoke, and pure theatrical violence. The absolute peak of the night came during the intro to “House of 1000 Corpses,” when Sheri Moon Zombie appeared beside him. The amphitheater lost its collective mind. For a few minutes it felt like the movie had broken through the screen and taken over the real world. Zombie’s performance was high-energy, grotesque, and glorious—the kind of set that leaves you grinning and slightly haunted on the walk back to the car.
Rob Zombie setlist
F.T.W. 84
Tarantula
Superbeast
The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition)
More Human Than Human
Scum of the Earth
Well, Everybody’s Fucking in a U.F.O.
Living Dead Girl
Heathen Days
Feel So Numb
House of 1000 Corpses (with Sheri Moon Zombie)
Never Gonna Stop (The Red, Red Kroovy)
Thunder Kiss ’65
Dragula
When the final notes of “Dragula” faded and the lights came up, Darien Lake felt different—emptier, quieter, like something had passed through and left its mark. Orgy lit the first spark, The HU raised the dead, Manson conducted the black mass, and Zombie brought the whole carnival crashing down in fire and laughter. Freaks on Parade 2026 didn’t just play a show. It turned a summer night in Western New York into a temporary house of a thousand corpses, and every one of them was dancing.
Full Gallery Click Here
Leave a Reply