I recently watch another Lewis Black show and was quite taken by how it was not what I had expected. Yes he was still the angry personae that I know from bits here and there, but his material was good and he was consistent in his tone and pacing. At the start of In God We Rust, Lewis does a bit where he braces his audience for the show to come, stressing in particular that people should not assume they know what type of comedian he is and not take a bit they saw on Comedy Central as any indication of his style. This segment went on longer than necessary and was not as good as when I have seen Stewart Lee do similar material, but it did seem to confirm what I knew already from the previous show. Except it didn't.
After this, Black plays much more on his angry style than the previous show. This is not a problem in principle for me since I enjoy his targeted and sharp rants on The Daily Show. Problem here is that he doesn't totally seem to have the material. He covers anger at airports, anger at modern mobile phones, stupid politicians (Bachmann and Palin of course), anger at Farmville, and so on. He is playing to a big crowd so perhaps this is why he only once or twice seems to challenge them – and even then he doesn't really present a case so much as push buttons. It is a shame because he can be really strong when building a sort of righteous anger routine which a focus and structure, but here he never really gets to that.
The broad material does still work and I had a handful of decent laughs, but if I am honest it was a bit disappointing in the subject selection and the approach taken.
