W.A.S.P. Celebrates 1984 to Headless in Boston
Concert Review:
W.A.S.P. — 1984 to Headless
Citizens House of Blues Boston
September 29, 2026
Some bands are part of your musical life for years, yet somehow you never get the chance to see them live. W.A.S.P. was one of those bands for me. I listened to them back in the day, knew the songs, followed the band, but for whatever reason I never caught them in concert. There was a chance in 1986 when W.A.S.P. was scheduled to play Providence with Black Sabbath on the Seventh Star tour, but that appearance was canceled. After that, our paths just never crossed.
So on September 29 at Citizens House of Blues Boston, more than four decades after the release of W.A.S.P.’s debut album, I finally saw W.A.S.P. live.
And they were damn good.
I’ll admit that I sometimes have mixed feelings about seeing bands from my younger days now. It isn’t necessarily because I expect them to sound bad. Most veteran bands can still put on very good shows. It’s something a little more personal than that.
You look at the guys onstage and realize they’ve gotten older.
And then it hits you: so have you.
There’s a little unwanted reminder of mortality mixed in with the nostalgia.
Blackie Lawless is 70 years old now. You certainly wouldn’t have known it from watching him command the stage in Boston.
His voice sounded remarkably good, the band was tight, and Lawless remained an entertaining frontman throughout the night. He moved around the stage with far more energy than you might expect from someone his age. Actually, he probably moved around more than I could, and I’m about ten years younger.
Much has been written over the years about W.A.S.P. and backing tracks. I really don’t care. Backing tracks and supplemental vocals have become commonplace in live music, including with bands considerably younger than W.A.S.P. What matters to me is what comes out of the speakers and whether the performance works in the room.
This one worked.
The lighting and stage production at House of Blues were excellent, but the point where the show really moved into another gear for me came during the middle portion of the set.
Standout stretch: “Thunderhead / Forever Free” → “The Real Me” → “The Headless Children”
The “Thunderhead / Forever Free” sequence led into The Who’s “The Real Me,” before W.A.S.P. launched into one of the highlights of the entire night, “The Headless Children.”
That song was tremendous live.
It sounded huge and heavy, and the guitar work through the middle section was one of those moments where I stopped thinking about reviewing the concert and simply watched.
Then came the theater.
As “The Headless Children” reached its climax, an Adolf Hitler figure appeared strapped into an electric chair. Lawless threw the switch, the figure convulsed as smoke poured around it, and the screens delivered the message: “Never Again.”
It was classic W.A.S.P. theater, updated for 2026. The band may no longer be recreating every notorious excess of its earliest years, but Blackie Lawless clearly hasn’t lost his instinct for putting a visual exclamation point on a song.
After “The Headless Children,” Lawless said goodnight and the band briefly left the stage.
Of course, they weren’t finished.
When W.A.S.P. returned, the concert became almost a celebration of everything that made the band memorable in the first place.
They came back with “I Wanna Be Somebody” and “L.O.V.E. Machine,” then moved through the “Circus / Doctor / Golgotha” sequence before closing with “Wild Child” and “Blind in Texas.”
That final stretch was where the show really kicked into overdrive for me. These are songs that have been around for four decades, but in a packed House of Blues they didn’t feel like museum pieces being carefully preserved for nostalgia. They sounded alive.
And maybe that’s what surprised me most.
I went into the night curious more than anything. W.A.S.P. had been part of my metal world since the early days, but somehow I never saw them live. I knew the songs, owned the music, and followed the band, yet more than 40 years passed before I finally caught them in concert.
Maybe that made this particular tour the perfect place to finally do it.
The 1984 to Headless Tour reaches back through the period that defined W.A.S.P., from the rawness of the self-titled debut through The Last Command and Inside the Electric Circus to the darker, more ambitious The Headless Children. Instead of watching a band pretend that those years never ended, I felt like I was watching a band acknowledge where it came from while still putting on a legitimate heavy metal show in 2026.
Was it W.A.S.P. in 1984?
Of course not.
Neither was I.
But for about 80 minutes at the House of Blues, none of that mattered very much.
More than forty years after I somehow missed them the first time around, I finally got to see W.A.S.P.
It was worth the wait.
W.A.S.P. — Boston Set List
- Intro
- Easy Living
- Fistful of Diamonds
- The Flame
- Mr. Cool / On Your Knees
- Thunderhead / Forever Free
- The Real Me
- The Headless Children
- I Wanna Be Somebody
- L.O.V.E. Machine
- Circus / Doctor / Golgotha
- Wild Child
- Blind in Texas
Set list transcribed from the printed W.A.S.P. stage set list from the September 29, 2026 Boston show.
© 2026 HeavyMetalBuzz.com. Review and photos by HeavyMetalBuzz.com.