Devilman! Devilman!!

Whatever gets you through the night, baby; we all have coping mechanisms.  Sometimes I want escapism, other times contemplation, possibly even deep spiritual rumination.

Tonight I just wanted something to soundtrack me running full pelt into the wall of my garage under the influence of wayyy too much tomato and lentil soup, clad only in my baggiest old Y-fronts* and wearing a saucepan as a helmet, whilst screaming obscenities at an uncaring, implacable fate.  White Zombie Astro-Creep: 2000 it is then.

It always puzzles me that White Zombie never seem to get the love they’re due in the hairy community whilst far lesser entititties get fawned over.  Maybe they ended up being synonymous with an industrial metal sound that never quite grew deep enough roots amongst my Luddite brethren, or possibly Rob Zombie hung around too long pushing the same old schtick until everyone got tired and it tarnished the memory of what had gone before.

At their best White Zombie were just a blast – as funny as fuck, as loud as Lucifer and as catchy as crabs.  They dropped their final and best LP in 1994, the tersely titled, Astro-Creep: 2000, Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head**.  The band co-produced with Terry Date and down-tuned everything they could to create a heavier, meaner sound; losing some of their swing in the process, but judging the sacrifice to volume worth it.

---

Now let us all settle down for a little wholesome family entertainment.

Yeah inbreed the witches and worship the dogs
Deformed and fucking lazy
Damn yourself and choke on my name
I'd love to love ya baby       (Super-Charger Heaven)

The lyrics are just a torrent of hyper-verbal satanic ejaculate meaning absolutely nothing at all; only two songs don’t contain profanity^.  I like that, it is somehow exactly right for this music and the stream-of-consciousness just seems to have been beamed in directly from the mind of a disturbed 14 year-old, who in the next month is either going to start hurting themselves with a compass, or settle down and set themselves on the road to accountancy (shudders in uncontrollable disgust).

I digress, Astro Creep: 2000 is a really well-produced LP, diamond hard and precise at times, fuzzily distorted at others.  The band, augmented by keyboard wiz Charlie Clouser, are operating at full throttle on this release.  John Tempesta was drafted in for this LP and he brings every ounce of his thrash metal chops to bear here.  Jay Yuenger (creditied as ‘J’) puts in a bravura guitar performance and the ever cool Sean Yseult*^ lays down some great growling bass lines.  Rob Zombie then splurges his thing all over the top.

The three standout tracks were all singles, the supporting cast of tunes were also mostly pretty good, with maybe one duffer; stand up and take a bow ‘El Phantasmo And The Chicken-Run Blast-o-Rama’.  Overall I just really like the sound, the copious use of, mostly, horror samples, the really satisfying depth of the rhythm section and the sheer teenage obnoxiousness of it all.  It scratches an itch for me.

Astro-Creep: 2000 confidently licks the toad with opener ‘Electric Head Pt.1 (The Agony)’ launching us with a Curse of Frankenstein sample and a track that is heavy enough to hang with Ministry.  The transition straight into ‘Super-Charger Heaven’ is just superb, in just a few short bars we are hurtling hellbound laughing maniacally, drinking Molotov cocktails and almost not caring about our overdue library books.  The samples of Latin are just so fucking exciting, so well used in the song … it really was the band’s finest moment^* and had me moshing along in my living room this morning.

The Tyrell Corporation referencing ‘More Human Than Human’ is another high, The way J’s guitars spiral upwards at the beginning are incredible, Zombie gives his best performance on the LP – the whole thing is just such an incredibly heavy groove.  It all gets a bit sexy for me.  ‘Electric Head Pt.2 (The Ecstasy)’ is another great groove-heavy ride – the video is basically a censored version of almost every film Rob Zombie would go on to make.

Shuffled away amongst the obvious on Astro-Creep: 2000 are some lesser known lights.  ‘Creature Of The Wheel’ is as close as White Zombie got to metal on the album, a real muddy treat that hits like a brick.  The grimly atmospheric ‘Blood, Milk and Sky’ is a departure.  The industrial rockabilly of ‘I, Zombie’ is an interesting, if noisy listen too, as is the Sepultura-like ‘Blur The Technicolor’.

In short then, a hard wild noisy ride to nowhere.  Astro-Creep: 2000 definitely merits a higher profile than it seems to get these days, it is a cool LP and White Zombie got to split at the absolute height of their powers.  A perfect soundtrack for running full pelt into the wall of your garage to, trust me on that one.   

997 Down.

PS: the video for ‘More Human Than Human’ – just how awesome is Sean’s headbanging?!

*brown, with cream piping.

**do me a favour people!

^White Zombie lose 1537 bonus points for not making a clean sweep of the board there.

*^check out her ace book I’m In The Band: Backstage Notes From The Chick In White Zombie, you can read it whilst browsing her home furnishing design range and marvelling at the fact she was cool enough to, briefly, play bass with the Cramps in 2006. I simply don’t have the words.

^*much as I love the video it de-emphasises the samples and censors the sweary bits, reducing my overall joy by some 43.2% compared to the LP version.