This album is exactly how you want it to be. If you (like me) find the John 5-era Rob Zombie albums a frustrating experience, with Rob’s signature creative vision mired among bland riffs and awkwardly-integrated “experiments”…well, terrible news on that front: John 5 is gone. He left the band to pursue his childhood dream of sitting on a tour bus with three middle-aged millionaires who hate each other, and we wish him the best. But this forced Rob to make a horrible decision…rehire his original guitarist, who co-wrote what many fans would regard as his best material and best solo albums. Oh no, anything but that!
Straight away, Mike Riggs (and returning bassist Blasko) just fix everything that was wrong with the last four or five Rob Zombie records. It’s brutal and direct and immediate and has more energy than a tokamak reactor. The Great Satan has three thoughts in its deranged caveman prefrontal cortex. 1) Keep it short 2) Keep it simple 3) Refer to steps 1 and/or 2 as appropriate. The album ends with its idea of a slow and meditative epic dirge. One that’s three minutes and thirty seconds in length.
This is not a return to the Hellbilly Deluxe sound. If you want tons of samples and loops and electronic textures, that’s not what he’s doing here. But if you want heaviness of the (shall we say) “metal” variety, you are feasting. The opening salvo of “FTW ’84” and “Tarantula” is almost overwhelming in its destructive firepower: staccato riffs are palm-muted out at machine-gun speed and backed with Ginger Fish’s double-bass drumming, something I’ve not heard on a Rob Zombie song in thirty years. [1]Not since White Zombie’s “Electric Head Pt.2 (The Ecstasy)” and “Feed The Gods”, to be precise.. Dare I say it, “Tarantula” even has some slight melodeath influences—those harmonized pitch-bends Riggs plays after the first chorus could be on an At the Gates record. The album’s stripped-down and raw, but bristling with surprising influences. It takes cues from genres and styles that I never thought Rob would go near.
Oh, and there’s punk, too. The Misfits have always been more of an inspiration than a direct influence for RZ, but near the end of the album we get “The Black Scorpion”, an all-out tribute to “Green Hell” and “Skulls” and so on—fast, neck-wrecking moshing under a blaring farfisa organ. It’s really good! As is “Punks and Demons”, a nasty, lo-fi Venom-sounding track with an 80s Slayer riff over the chorus.
“(I’m a) Rock ‘N’ Roller” is a soul-deadened tribute to literally-deadened Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream”. (T-Rex, too. I’ve always suspected that Rob might be a secret Marc Bolan fan: he has the same psychedelic lyrical approach.) It has tense, thundercloud verses. What do ten thousand people sound like to ears ringing with tinnitus? Like nothing. The rockstar is in the masses, but not of the masses. Then the chorus arrives. Or falls on your neck like a guillotine. “That doesn’t sound like fun! Also, probably fatal!” Buddy, you’re in the Spookshow International. Having your head severed by a stainless steel blade is an inconvenience, yes, but not necessarily a fatal one. It’s pretty much the price of admission.
Then there’s the fourth track and possible album standout “Heathen Days”. Propulsive and addictive and fastfastfast, the track just attacks the listener like a demented skeleton and holds up with the best stuff Rob Zombie has ever put on a record. I like the under-the-verse riff, where Riggs picks natural harmonics on the 10th and 12th fret (or something like that). Like, that’s all the sonic diversity I want, you know? I don’t really need bluegrass and chicken-picking and lap-steel slide guitar on a Rob Zombie record. I’m a simple man: just give me a natural harmonic now and then.
The album does lose some energy in its middle stretch: “Sir Lord Acid Wolfman” and “The Devilman” feel like they could be John 5 studio leftovers. They are a bit slow and baggy for my tastes. The former is apparently a pirate character Rob came up with (the patriarch of a Manson family on the high seas). But the closing track “Unclean Animals” is wonderfully eerie. A psychedelic Iron Butterfly freakout that feels like being dead. You’re wandering down a long hallway, maybe some dark woods. You can’t tell whether you’re going to the good place or the bad one, but from the smell of sulfur hanging in the air, it ain’t looking great.
So do we have a bona-fide comeback on our hands? I guess. Rob Zombie has returned. The Great Satan slaps, and I am beyond happy with 80-90% of it. “Who Am I”, asks track 5. For Rob, the answer is self-referential: *this.* I struggle to imagine a Rob Zombie fan who dislikes this. If you are that person, I choose my next words with love and pity: I do not understand you. It might be time for the state to step in and make you comfortable. Music cannot bring you happiness. Perhaps medication will.
References
| ↑1 | Not since White Zombie’s “Electric Head Pt.2 (The Ecstasy)” and “Feed The Gods”, to be precise. |
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