Taking their name from the Mercury Theatre, the theater troup with which Orson Welles broadcast his 1938 War of the Worlds radio show, Mercury Radio Theater put a slightly new spin on the concept album: each album contains a narrated horror story, macabre yet amusing, interspersed with short, hard hitting surf punk instrumentals.
A typical live show features the story artwork from the album displayed on a screen behind the band (which now includes a live horn section) while they play through an album (or "episode"), and if you're lucky the band's cult fan base, dubbed the Zombies, will be in attendance to act out their own zombie story in the mosh pit as the show progresses.