Published on Oct 4, 2002
After the huge sucess of Rob Zombie’s first solo effort, 1998’s
Hellbilly Deluxe, he took time off from music to concentrate
on directing his Hollywood film debut,
House Of 1000 Corpses, which was completely in 2000 or early
2001, and due to overly graphic content among other scandals, has
yet to see a theatrical release, but that is another story.
After he finished the film he promptly went about recording the
debut album’s follow up,
The Sinister Urge. Seems like he took a bit more time with
this disc, and that shows in the improved consistency. Zombie’s
music isn’t exactly diverse or deep, but you can always expect a
batch of entertaining, horror themed, metallic anthems. There’s
nothing fancy or pretentious about this guy, and he’s the last
person who’d think of himself as an “artist”…he’s well aware that
he’s just an entertainer, and that’s all he tries to do – no more,
no less. It’s a simple formula that he’s comfy with, and apparently
it’s a formula that works with the public as well, judging by the
huge sales of his discs.
Like
Hellbilly Deluxe and all those White Zombie albums before
that,
The Sinister Urge basically serves up another tasty blood
splattered platter of more of the same industrial tinged Hammer
horror inspired hard rock with heavy, shredding riffs, huge beats,
and Zombie’s gravelly vocals screaming away those very catchy, fist
pumpin’ melodies that don’t say a damn thing about anything. It’s
really dumb music, but I’ll be hornswaggled if it ain’t brilliantly
fun in its execution. Awesome shit, this is!
The energy and intensity of the music is really addictive once
again, and while it may not have the immediately gratifying catchy
pop hooks of
Hellbilly Deluxe‘s best songs, there isn’t any of the filler
present this time around that plagues that first release. There are
enough cool riffs and melodies to adequately distinguish all the
songs from one another, even if after a while it may seem that
there isn’t much variation in the overall sound. Pretty solid stuff
all the way through.
“Feel So Numb” is the big hit that you’ve likely heard on the
radio and in the clubs for the better part of the past year (since
the album’s release in October 2001), but I think it’s one of the
weaker tracks here. It comes across as somewhat contrived, like
it’s trying really hard to be a hit song, whereas most of the other
songs sound more natural. The industrial/electronic sounds that
give the guy his unique sound are more subtle on this release, but
there’s still no mistaking this music for anyone, or thing, else. I
think “Scum Of The Earth” is probably the best of the conventional,
crunchy rockers here, and it was first included on the
Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack in 2000. I might as well
take this opportunity to say that that is hands down one of the
worst films I’ve ever seen, and that John Woo is a horrid director
who relies on all flash and no substance. My intelligence feels
quite insulted everytime I sit through one of his films. Back to
the album.
The biggest surprise with
The Sinister Urge is that there are moments where Rob Zombie
actually deviates from his tried-and-true formula for a bit to try
something new.
*GASP* *SHOCK* *HORROR*
Yep, “Never Gonna Stop (The Red, Red Kroovy)” is mid tempo! And
it has (get this) acoustic guitars driving the verses over a chunky
beat! And Zombie tries to sing! Still pretty creepy though. It’s a
good song and a really welcome change of pace, at least to my ears.
Before I even got to it, I was thinking to myself about the album
so far: “Yah, this is all pretty good and solid, but it’s typical.
Why doesn’t he try something new to break the redundancy?”. I
figured that I’d get pretty bored of the disc if it was as one-note
as most of his past releases, and I guess he felt the same way,
thankfully!
Zombie’s big blood brother Ozzy Osbourne makes a pretty cool
guest appearance on “Iron Head”, singing a duet like he did with
Lita Ford, only this time with a scary lookin dude with dreadlocks
down to his ass. Man those things must smell. It boggles my mind
why Zombie wasn’t offered a role as one of the Psychlos in
Battlefield Earth.
Where’s Alice Cooper though?? I would have expected an
appearance by him somewhere on this record to be much more likely
than Ozzy, as Zombie practically worships the Coop. Oh well, maybe
next time…at least they did that awesome industrial duet “Hands
Of Death” a few years ago for the
X-Files soundtrack.
I also really like the final track, “House Of 1000 Corpses”,
which is probably the theme song to the movie. It’s a 9 minute slow
track that just sort of plods along quietly, but crafts a very
eerie, suspenseful mood, as the soundtrack to a horror movie
probably should. Great song to end the album with, instead of just
another loud, in-your-face rock song. I hope he tries his hand at
more atmospheric stuff like this in the future, because it’s quite
well done.
Nothing to say about the lyrics really. Same old stream of
consciousness approach with the usual comic book horror leanings.
The man, his music, and his image are basically like a comic book
come to life. The booklet is of course a twisted and bizarre
pastiche of comic culture in vintage Zombie style. We already have
enough songwriters out there who like to think that they have deep
meaningful messages and lyrics, so we need a few honest guys like
Rob around to keep things fun and real. Dig?