Powerman 5000 at the Rust Belt -- July 22.
Saturday, July 22, 8 p.m.
The Rust Belt, 533 12th Avenue, East Moline IL
Industrial rockers whose Billboard-charting hits include Destroy What You Enjoy, Builders of the Future, and the platinum-selling Tonight the Stars Revolt!, the musicians of Powerman 5000 headline a July 22 concert at East Moline venue The Rust Belt, the group's most recent album The Noble Rot having received a five-out-of-five rating by Cryptic Rock, which called the recording "a must-listen if you're a fan of Powerman 5000 or the fantastic camp of a B-movie."
Helmed by vocalist Spider (a.k.a. Michael Cummings, younger brother of Rob Zombie), the Boston-based underground electro-metal band Powerman 5000 earned a popular cult following along the East Coast before engrossing the rest of the country with 1999’s Tonight the Stars Revolt! The group continued to ply their comic-book-hero/sci-fi-themed punk, hard rock, and industrial metal wares into the next two decades with highlights arriving via 2003’s Transform and 2014’s Builders of the Future, both of which saw Billboard chart success.
Powerman 5000 emerged in the early ’90s and found favor with local audiences with the release of their 1994 indie debut EP True Force and 1995’s LP The Blood Splat Rating System. Two years later, the band relocated to Los Angeles, where they released a revamped version of their debut as Mega!! Kung Fu Radio. Touring with the likes of Marilyn Manson and Korn, as well as a stint on Ozzfest, expanded their fan base and led up to Powerman 5000’s 1997 science fiction-esque follow-up Tonight the Stars Revolt! The record went platinum, helped in part by the success of singles “When Worlds Collide” and “Nobody’s Real” on MTV, and let to the halted release of 2001's Anyone for Doomsday? Following a series of lineup changes, 2003's Transform marked the band’s new, more punk-inspired, less-industrial sound, and the recording debuted at number 25 on the Billboard charts, producing a hit in the song “Free."
After returning with another all-new lineup headed by Cummings (the only band member who has been with Powerman 5000 since its inception), the group went back to their industrial-metal ways, releasing Somewhere on the Other Side of Nowhere in 2009. A covers album, Copies, Clones & Replicants, arrived in 2011, and was followed by Builders of the Future in 2014, New Wave in 2017, and The Noble Rot in 2020. The latter recording inspired Cryptic Rock to insist that it was a work "worth getting excited for," calling the Powerman 5000 ensemble a "band who still have all of their original mojo after all these years."
Powerman 5000 headlines their East Moline engagement on July 22 with additional sets by Julien-K and Priest, admission to the 8 p.m. concert starts at $26.75, and more information and tickets are available by visiting TheRustBeltQC.com.
