White Zombie Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
By
Peter Atkinson,
Contributor
Friday, November 21, 2008 @ 11:52 PM
(Geffen)
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Most peoples’ experience with White Zombie was the whirlwind stretch from when they exploded with 1992’s La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1 until they imploded after 1995’s Astro-Creep: 2000 .... But White Zombie had paved quite a history for themselves long before they became an overnight sensations - it’s just that hardly anyone knew it. Perhaps for good reason.
This four-CD, one-DVD retrospective will certainly help fill in the blanks - literally all of them - for those who jumped onto the White Zombie bandwagon once “Thunder Kiss ‘65” was on MTV all friggin’ day and Beavis & Butt-head were going apeshit over them. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie brings together all 64 songs the band ever released - some of them extremely rare - into one all-encompassing, chronological package that shows just what a long strange trip their career actually was. The DVD tosses in White Zombie’s various videos and a bunch of bootleg-quality live footage for good measure.
When the band formed in New York in 1985, frontman Rob Zombie - who worked on the “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” TV show for a stretch - still had not adopted the “Zombie” last name and White Zombie’s music was anything but the thundering electro-metal they would later go multi-platinum with. The 30 tracks on Corpses’ first two discs show the trial and, mostly, error the band went through before they got headed in the right direction.
The quartet’s debut EP, Gods on Voodoo Moon, which sold all of 100 of the 300 copies that were pressed, the Psycho-Head Blow Out EP and even their debut full-length, Soul-Crusher, saw them dabbling in arty noise and jam rock that recalled Iggy Pop and the Stooges and Sonic Youth. Actually, White Zombie sounded more like a bad garage band than anything else. And I don’t mean bad in a funny sort of way, I mean just bad, like really fucking awful.
Aimless tunes like “Tales from the Scarecrowman” and “Shack of Hate,” shoddy, low-budget recordings and Zombie’s unintelligible nasal yelping make a much of this early material pretty hard to listen to. It wasn’t until 1989’s Make The Die Slowly that White Zombie’s metallic tendencies really began to manifest themselves - and the band stopped sucking.
Tracks like “Disaster Blaster” and “Godslayer” were leaner, meaner and much heavier, and Zombie discovered his voice’s lower register and began to roar with a hell of a lot more authority, giving White Zombie some balls to go with their weirdness. It was a formula that worked. Not long after, the band had a big label deal and the rest was history.
Discs three and four offer up the White Zombie everyone is familiar with: the aforementioned La Sexorcisto and Astro-Creep - along with covers and soundtrack stuff that actually was some of the best stuff the band ever did. Their cover of Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave” was massive, thanks to Sean Yseult’s quaking bass and Jay Yuenger’s hulking riffs. Ditto their own “Feed The Gods,” from the soundtrack to the otherwise forgettable film “Airheads,” and “The One,” from another wretched movie, “Escape from L.A.”
And say what you will about White Zombie’s campy B-grade horror-movie schtick, La Sexorcisto was undeniably catchy and certainly rocked. And Astro-Creep - thanks to the lethal production of Terry Date, who worked similar magic with Pantera - was one of the heaviest mainstream metal albums of the ‘90s. The band’s break up after the Astro-Creep tour was actually a fortuitous move, since there was probably no way they were going to do anything bigger and better.
As the last two discs are what is essentially the, well, “essential” White Zombie material - and most fans probably already have it - there’s little compelling reason to fork over $60 or more for the whole Let Sleeping Corpses Lie shebang, as impressive a package as it is. Were the rare and hard-to-find tracks not, in many cases, downright embarrassing, if not utter crap, it might be a different story. And the DVD is a bit of a letdown too, since the live footage is mostly cruddy, handy-cam shot stuff that looks like it was cobbled together from YouTube.
So unless you’re really, really curious or a hardcore collector that absolutely, positively must have everything White Zombie, best to let this sleeping corpse lie.
* * (two out of five stars)
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DrDom - 12/25/2008 5:24:32 PM if you own every cd ever released - no need to buy this not unless you have to have everything ever released by the band and your a collector
parasite13013 - 12/18/2008 9:02:52 PM Email copies?? WTF?? It's idiots like n8ster that killed the music industry. Save your loot??? Where's your support???? You call yourself a fan but yet you don't want people to buy/ support the band buy paying money for something that the band has worked on. Do you work for free? Not saying this music is bad or good but by saying your a fan and then turn around and say don't buy this shit is pretty fucking contradictory. The pictures hung on your walls in your house are probably downloads off the net that were printed out and color framed by PrintMaster gold. BBAAAAHHAAAAAA. You cheap bastard!
N8STER - 12/13/2008 1:11:46 PM Well, being a White Zombie fan & a fan of Rob's I bought this boxed set. I really wasn't too impressed with it. The earlier Zombie stuff just plain sucks. I can see how they had to change thier sound in order to get a record deal. I love Devil Music vol.1 & Astrocreep, but if your a White Zombie fan you've already got those discs, so the box set is pointless. Rob should just continue to do solo projects, and make awesome movies. He definately can direct. He's proven that 10 fold. If anyone wants copies of the early stuff I can just send them to you via e-mail. Save your loot.
raiderRX7 - 12/11/2008 4:46:57 PM I went to the astro-creep concert in birmingham alabama, white zombie fucking rocked. we did a 180 in the middle of the highway at about 77mph without an incident. fucking incredible. we had a fucking gr8 time.
Mummyman - 12/9/2008 5:45:05 AM Atkinson is dead on with this review and who or why someone should/might want to purchase. I purchased it because i'm the has to have everything guy. Scap, never truer words spoken- well put! INDY- I think my wife is the sole Rob fan left on earth
IndyDoug - 12/8/2008 4:42:15 PM Chicks are not into White Zombie. They don't care about Rob anymore either.
fizzgig - 12/8/2008 11:59:16 AM He explained why in the article, so yes, reading it does have something to do with it.
analgravy2 - 12/8/2008 10:46:09 AM I for once agree with Peter on his review. It's kinda sad this band is gone though. Rob's solo efforts are too cheesy and far from hardcore.
Muledong - 12/6/2008 12:33:37 AM C'mon Rob, we're not stupid enough to buy into this dash for cash!
parasite13013 - 12/4/2008 9:21:07 PM Reading the article has nothing to do with the question I ask. I also ask this so called journalist.....why does anywone need to be a hardcore fan (of ANY band for that matter) to enjoy good tunes??? Good music is good music whether or not it was a hit etc. It's all a matter of opinion.
fizzgig - 11/28/2008 10:06:59 AM Read the review ...
parasite13013 - 11/27/2008 9:13:08 PM diehards fizzgig???? Why would you need to be a diehard fan to enjoy good tunes?
fizzgig - 11/27/2008 7:06:05 PM Well, it's making some people happy, since the early stuff is hard to find, if you want it. I like Zombie, but this is really for diehards only.
philzy - 11/27/2008 2:05:34 PM It doesn't have every song ever released. There are two missing from the original Gods on Voodoo Moon cassette. What kind of liner notes does it have?
scrapmetal - 11/23/2008 7:49:37 AM xmas cash in from a guy out of ideas.
