My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult brought the diabolical thrills to Orlando's Abbey

OK, so, yes, the increasing voraciousness of the nostalgia-industrial complex is more than a little disconcerting. But hear us out, sometimes you can go home again. And that point was more than borne out during Friday’s My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult’s “Evil Eye” tour stop at the Abbey in Orlando.

Billed as an evening of TKK playing “classic” material from 1987-1997, the show was a can’t-miss proposition for acolytes new and old of this seminal Chicago electro-industrial act. During their height, none of their industrial peers (Ministry, Front 242, KMFDM, etc.) were as pervy, queer, Satan-adjacent, sinister, ecstatic and druggy as this musical party-on-wheels. Would they still have that diabolical verve decades later? Yup.

First up though, openers Kanga and Adult. held their own even when faced with a decidedly partisan audience. Solo project Kanga did it by impressing with smoldering dark electro-pop and a serpentine stage presence. (Folks who fiddled with their phones during her set will be breathlessly bragging about how they saw her “back when” a year or two from now.)

Motor City duo Adult. brought total Detroit sturm und drang, just flattening everything in their path with a primal, wracked throb. We’ve seen them a handful of times before and they’ve never sounded better or more urgent.

Thrill Kill took the stage wrapped in leather and shades, with a bad-acid trip of a backdrop behind them. The setlist was, indeed, their wildest and weirdest — including “A Daisy Chain 4 Satan” and “Sex on Wheelz” — and they delivered the goods with lustful vigor.

The sold-out crowd was losing their collective minds, and a five-song encore culminating in “Kooler Than Jesus” saw band and audience alike elated and utterly spent. Who wants a cigarette?