Alright, this is actually the choice I had in front of me the other night, and I went with Skinny Puppy. They're my #1 favourite band of all time (tied with two others for first place), and I'd never seen them before. I had the chance back in the 90's, but I didn't because of two things: they scared me, and I heard the shows were "messy" (as in, Gwar messy). Well, this one wasn't all that messy, but man, was it scary. Ogre comes out in this nightmarish costume with straight-jacket straps, a beak, and not just corpse-paint, but rotting, degenerating corpse-paint. It was quite meticulously painted on, and very realistic until he started sweating. And getting messy. Yes, there was much substance abuse: mud, blood, some sort of oozy chemical substance (this was in a gas mask, from which he slurped and spat -- I'm not sure if it was supposed to be vomit, or, due to the name of the song -- "VX Gas Attack" -- chemical warfare-type chemicals -- either way, it was disgustingly convincing), as well as other things. Ogre himself is quite the showman -- not sure if he ousts Tom Jones, but he might -- lots of posing and energy. He was definitely on.

And the music -- excellent: cEvin Key (multi-instrumentalist) played mostly drums all night, and he was excellent. What Jay would call an "overplayer", but we all know how much I love wankers, so that's a good thing. This is industrial music, drums are key. If you aren't grooving to it, something's wrong. Mark Walk was in an intense noise-cage, and...I forget his name, but he's played with them before...this priest guy played guitar -- one of Steinberg's new double-necked guitar/bass thingies (buitar?).

Anyway, the point of this is -- knowing what you know, which would you have chosen?

Me, I can die a happy man, I've now seen all three of my favourite bands live.