Gaga puts head injury aside for first Oz show

Lady Gaga shows off her bruises in a Twitter photo. Photo / Twitter

A wig-whipping, fist-pounding Lady Gaga opened the Australian leg of her world tour with no hint of the bruising injury she suffered days ago.

The inimitable performer's show in Brisbane on Wednesday night saw her storming around a gothic castle stage like a bizarre Barbie doll that broke into He-Man's play set and threw a house party.

The Born This Way Ball tour - Gaga's third - is billed as an "electro-metal pop-opera" and delivers something like that, in the way it defies description.

Gaga is first marched out of her castle on a puppet horse, only to moments later emerge in gold costume from an inflatable zippered womb to perform the anthem Born This Way.

The womb deflates and Gaga struts around the central area of her stage, known as the Monster Pit and reserved for early arriving general admission fans, rocking out Bad Romance, one of several past hits in the show.

As we've come to expect from Gaga there's countless eccentric costumes, and she gives her adoring fans her all, throwing everything at the two-hour spectacular.

As she roars, gyrates and tears around the stage in a victory lap with the Australian flag, it's hard to believe that days ago she was accidentally knocked in the head with a pole while performing in Auckland.

The singer tweeted a photo of her "clonker" of a black eye on arriving in Brisbane on Monday, and has been out of public view since.

There were no accidents in Wednesday night's show, but plenty of empowering messages about self-expression and flattery of her "little monsters", as "mother monster" calls her fans.

A highlight was a reinvention of perhaps her most infamous costume to date - the "meat" dress - and something of an explanation for it.

"Did you ever feel like you were treated like a piece of meat?" Gaga asks before sending a dancer into a prop meat grinder and cranking the handle.

Moments later she appears draped across a "meat" lounge and declares something about grinding up her ex-lovers, only now she's wearing a bra made of machine guns and army pants.

It makes no sense at all, but as it's Gaga, it doesn't matter.

Her 110-show world tour continues at Brisbane's Entertainment Centre on Thursday and Saturday nights before heading to Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

She then tours through Europe and the UK until October.

- AAP