Mushroomhead and Fear Factory brought the Soul of a New War Machine Tour to Tally Ho Theater in Leesburg on Sunday night, with Nine Treasures opening on their first-ever US tour. I’ll admit I initially thought the pairing of Mushroomhead with Fear Factory was strange.
Then I spent the afternoon revisiting Call the Devil, Mushroomhead’s latest album. The song structures and the singing style (particularly Ms. Jackie’s) reminded me of KMFDM, and I realized they are more industrial than I remembered. It’s hard not to make comparisons with Slipknot given the size of the band, the jumpsuits, and the masks; those comparisons abounded when Mushroomhead released XX in the early aughts. Musically, they are very different artists.
Doors
The line for doors wrapped around the block and then some. There was an inflatable dragon above the Tally Ho marquee for Halloween. It looked menacing.
In line, I met Joe, here for Fear Factory first and Mushroomhead second. “Archetype was my first metal album that I bought with my own money,” he said. And now, he told me, you can’t stream it: “Somebody who owns the rights won’t let them stream it, and it’s caught up in something.” I checked Apple Music on the spot. The discography jumps from Concrete to Mechanize.
Joe has history with this room. He saw Mushroomhead here last year and broke his arm when he slipped on someone’s spilled beer. “It still hurts sometimes, when you break your arm at 36.” His plan for tonight? “Just going in the pit. You can’t let it scare you.”
I raised the Slipknot comparison. “Completely different sonically,” Joe said. “The sampling, all of it.”
Nine Treasures
Nine Treasures are from Inner Mongolia: Askhan on guitars, vocals, and tovshuur; Orgil on bass; Saina on balalaika and guitars; Namra on drums; and Nars on morin khuur, the horsehead fiddle. Their latest album, Seeking the Absolute, came out on Metal Blade last fall. After the set, they schlepped their own gear through the crowd. It was truly a yeoman’s job.
“We are Nine Treasures, coming from CHINA!”
It’s folk metal with strong nu-metal influences, built on traditional Mongolian folk music. Askhan has embraced harsh vocals, but with a thrash timbre: not a full-on scream, more a gravelly vocalization with some semblance of melody. He’s not afraid to hit the falsetto notes, either.
If you thought the guitar and bass would walk all over the balalaika (a Russian instrument!) or the morin khuur, you would be wrong. They’re miked and amplified, central to the sound. They provide the atmosphere and the textures you’d otherwise get from a synthesizer or something like an accordion.
Namra is stuffed all the way stage left. There’s so much other gear onstage under cloth that it’s the only place his five-piece DW kit fits. He makes the most of it, with lots of tom work under a galloping rhythm that reminded me of the polka beats you’d hear from Korpiklaani. During a bridge, they invited the crowd to clap along, which was met with energy, and there’s a strong rock ‘n’ roll and blues influence to their sense of rhythm and timing.
Then the instruments started trading hands. Saina ditched the balalaika for a guitar, and Askhan stepped back to just sing. Just kidding: He had a pad of some sort, triggering what sounded like samples of a guqin. Surprise again, Askhan was back on guitar, with Saina playing leads alongside the morin khuur. Their longest song ran almost doom-folk, slow, built on full-stop breaks a measure long before they’d pick right back up. Then everyone swapped back to their original configuration.
The crowd gave them lots of love between songs, most of them standing and nodding along to the beat. They closed with “Black Heart,” their fastest song, which reminded me A LOT of Korpiklaani’s “Happy Little Boozer.” Everyone seemed to agree they’re great.
Fear Factory
Keith was hearing Nine Treasures for the first time. “The orchestration was awesome. I love the blending of the acoustic instruments with the metal side of it. So it was a pleasant surprise.” A friend of his had compared them to Wind Rose.
Aaron, in a Master Boot Record shirt (which is why I started chatting him up), had the same comparison I did, unprompted: “I thought they sounded like another band that I like, Korpiklaani.” He was here for Fear Factory, and he’s “not a stranger to Mushroomhead.” On the Slipknot question: “I think they couldn’t escape the comparison.”
Keith had a longer memory of this town. He used to run a production company, Back Up Production Presents, booking local shows. “Growing up here in the early two-thousands, there was Ball’s Bluff down in Leesburg. We played there a lot, and there was a huge original scene here.” Metal Mondays, once every three months. “A lot of these places died out.”
I made my usual pitch that Tally Ho is the new Jaxx. “I would say so,” Keith said. “It’s a smaller venue, so it brings more of that close vibe to it. Kind of like a dive bar, almost.”
Elton John played on the PA.
Fear Factory then came out swinging with “Acres of Skin.” Dino Cazares is the only original member left. Milo Silvestro already sounds at home, balancing his own style with a throwback to Burton C. Bell. Dino and Tony Campos (a founding member of Static-X) are a powerful duo. Pete Webber sits on his own drum riser, back and center, as it should be.
“Powershifter” was a brutal throwback to their early work. The drums were SO LOUD. On to Obsolete with “Shock,” and a heavy reliance on strobe lights for their stage effects. Then “Edgecrusher” and its infectious grooves. Milo demanded a circle pit, and a fervent sect of the faithful got rowdy in the center of the GA floor.
“Linchpin” was the second song tonight from Digimortal. It’s very groovy, and everyone was bobbing along to it, with an AWESOME drum solo to close it out. I’m probably in the minority for liking that record, but Digimortal was my first Fear Factory album, and I’m so glad they played this one.
Next came their “newest song, first song with this era of Fear Factory”: “Roboticist.” It’s very much a Fear Factory song, and it shares a lot with “Linchpin” and the Digimortal writing we’d just heard. Then again, that’s just quintessential Fear Factory.
Dino noted they’re from California before launching into “Martyr,” then “Arise Above Oppression” without a break, both from Soul of a New Machine, the 1992 debut this tour’s name nods to. Webber is an excellent addition to this incarnation of Fear Factory. His chops are precise, and he has the speed and intensity to propel the band. He reminds me of Mike Smith (of Suffocation fame) or Nick Barker (from Dimmu Borgir, among other acts) in how aggressive his playing is. They ended it with an abrupt “thank you.”
“Archetype” was ethereal, with its synth textures and layered vocal effects, and plenty of the crowd were excited to hear it. I last saw them tour that record on Oct. 11, 2004, at The NorVa in Norfolk, with Lamb of God, Children of Bodom, and Throwdown. Twenty-two years later, the album isn’t on my Apple Music. The song is still in the set. Somewhere in the crowd, Joe got his.
“Make some fucking noise for Mr. Dino Cazares!”
A water break, then “Demanufacture.” Afterward, Dino confirmed it was a sold-out night and introduced the band, claiming he found Milo in a bowl of pasta in Rome. Then “Replica,” another industrial metal classic. Dino plays a headless Kiesel, his signature model, which I assume is the source of his tone (duh) and power. His sound with Fear Factory is iconic.
Finally, “Zero Signal.” “Open the pit,” Milo demanded one last time. They exited to the Terminator theme. Virgil checked the exits for agents from Skynet.
Mushroomhead
Mushroomhead took a while to come out, given the gear they needed to set up onstage. The lineup: Ms. Jackie (Jackie LaPonza), Steve Rauckhorst, and Scott “Strike” Beck on vocals; Joe “Jenkins” Gaal on guitars; Joel Karschner on bass, new as of July; Aydin “Alien” Kerr on drums; and Simon Kanaris and Jordan Gannon on water drums.
WATER DRUMS. Two per percussionist, flanking stage left and right. I wasn’t sure I could hear them, but they were visually impressive. “Props,” Virgil said.
For “Fall In Line,” Ms. Jackie came out for the first time and went crowd surfing while singing. Very impressive. Here was the KMFDM thread, live. “Our Apologies” swapped her out for Strike as the other singer. For “Qwerty” they demanded everyone give them the finger, which is very punk rock of them, and the song reminded me a lot of Mr. Bungle’s debut album.
There was a guy in the crowd wearing a toad costume. I appreciated the visual pun.
Then Strike went crowd surfing while singing, and the dismount back to the stage was impressive. The water drummers changed into devil masks. Ms. Jackie came back out for “The Heresy.” For “Madness Within,” the water drummers returned in exaggerated World War I German army helmets.
For “Carry On,” a deep cut from 2020’s A Wonderful Life that’s getting its first live run on this tour, we were asked to hold up any lighting devices we had and pretend it was a Journey concert. Virgil held up his flask.
Apparently, the water drums ARE miked. Virgil retracted his “props” slur.
Their partial cover of Prince’s “When Doves Cry” was surprisingly powerful, and it brought Ms. Jackie out again. The water drummers went back to their original Mushroomhead masks, and “Among the Crows” brought the whole band to the front: all three singers and the drummers. They closed with “Born of Desire,” which has many “War Pigs” moments in it.
Considering the whole set, the theatricality and, dare I say, artistry of what Mushroomhead does visually is just as important as the music itself. Like GWAR, Mr. Bungle, and even acts musically orthogonal to them like Insane Clown Posse, Mushroomhead occupy a space in heavy metal that’s as much performance art as live music.
Fear Factory are an industrial metal band with a heavy emphasis on their light show and their musical textures, but ultimately, they’re four guys onstage. Mushroomhead have gone even farther into the theatrical. It would not be wrong to say we saw Stomp tonight. (WATER DRUMS!)
Outside, Logan, VIP pass in hand, named his favorite part without hesitating: “The water drums.” He got into Mushroomhead two weeks ago (wild!); Fear Factory have been “one of my favorite bands” since middle school.
Ray was clutching a new Nine Treasures shirt; his neighbor dragged him out for Fear Factory, and it was his first time seeing any of the three. Of Mushroomhead: “They put on a show. It was definitely about the show.” He was up front and surprised when the singers jumped into the crowd. Nine Treasures? “If they come around, yeah, we’ll go see them.”
Verdict from the guy who thought the pairing was strange: Ms. Jackie sounded like Lucia from KMFDM in the room, too. Joe called the Slipknot comparison “completely different sonically,” and the show agreed. Logan’s favorite part was the water drums, and they were miked after all. Ray walked in for Fear Factory and walked out in a Nine Treasures shirt. Keith thinks his town has a scene again, and the dragon over the marquee held its post.
Setlists
Nine Treasures
Full setlist unavailable. The band closed with “Black Heart.”
Fear Factory
1. “Acres of Skin”
2. “Powershifter”
3. “Shock”
4. “Edgecrusher”
5. “Linchpin”
6. “Roboticist”
7. “Martyr”
8. “Arise Above Oppression”
9. “Archetype”
10. “Demanufacture”
11. “Replica”
12. “Zero Signal”
Mushroomhead
1. SpongeBob SquarePants Theme (intro tape)
2. “Eye to Eye”
3. “Fall in Line”
4. “Our Apologies”
5. “Qwerty”
6. “Sun Doesn’t Rise”
7. “Solitaire / Unraveling”
8. “The Heresy”
9. “Madness Within”
10. “Carry On”
11. “Seen It All”
12. “Prepackaged”
13. “When Doves Cry” (Prince cover) / “Among the Crows”
14. “12 Hundred”
15. “Empty Spaces” (Pink Floyd cover)
16. “Born of Desire”
Here are some photos of Mushroomhead performing live at Tally Ho Theater on Oct. 18, 2026. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Gerald Henry.
Here are some photos of Fear Factory performing live at Tally Ho Theater on Oct. 18, 2026. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Gerald Henry.
Here are some photos of Nine Treasures performing live at Tally Ho Theater on Oct. 18, 2026. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Gerald Henry.
