^{Photo by Nellie Sweet}

A swarm of KMFDM fans in shin-swallowing boots, leather bondage kilts, and fishnets stream by as my friend Andy and I loiter in the House of Blues lobby, killing time until Andy’s concert buddies show up. When they do, the girls come bearing gossip: they were at KMFDM's afterparty in NYC last night, and they report that the band mentioned being nervous about playing Boston.

It’s unsettling news, but not too surprising. After all, we’re standing on the grave of Axis, the site of a disastrous 2003 KMFDM show. That night six years ago, the band members were all sick as dogs, and even though they put on a more-than-decent show, the Axis audience was legendarily awful. KMFDM hasn’t played Boston proper since (they did swing by the Middle East for their 20th anniversary tour) and skipped Massachusetts completely on their Hau Ruck tour.

Tonight's crowd is the expected mix of grizzled old-school rivetheads and folks like me who first jumped on KMFDM’s industrial wave of destruction as high schoolers in the mid-'90s. Less expected is the horde of dewy-faced young things. I suspect more than a few of them were lured here by the openers, the Aussie electro-industrial duo Angelspit.