White Zombie lived Charles Beaumont’s quote about showbiz.
“…like climbing to the top of a mountain of manure to pluck one perfect rose– only to discover that you’ve lost your sense of smell.”
They slaved for a decade to the obdurate disregard of the record business. Too art school for CBGB’s and too tasteless for East Village, they floated between punk rock, psychedelic noise rock, and heavy metal, depending on which guitarist was in or out. They were always broke, sometimes homeless, and occasionally starving. Their singer changed his name three times. It sounds like the kind of arduous vision-quest where if you knew what was ahead you’d never take the first step.
In 1992 they got their break and became one of the defining metal acts of the decade. It was too late. The band was already kind of over. Behind the scenes they’d burned out, couldn’t get along anymore, and the bassist and singer had broken up. Shortly after White Zombie exploded in a good way they exploded again, this time in a bad way. Instead of reaping the rewards of their toil, it all just ended. Their career as a headline metal act seems compressed and short: a band that came from nowhere only to vanished into the deep abysm of history. Most fans did not know about the ten-year iceberg beneath the water, but that’s the part of the iceberg that wrecks the ship.
For years, White Zombie’s early releases were obscure rarities. (Hidden on purpose, one might suspect…) As a teenaged fan reading the band’s Wikipedia, I was struck by the contrast between the band’s first release (Gods on Voodoo Moon—no label, self-produced, sold 100 copies) and their last (Astro-Creep 2000—major label, produced by Terry Date, certified 2x Platinum). It’s hard to imagine Metallica’s first album (for example) languishing in such neglect. Once White Zombie began filling arenas, why did nobody put these early albums back into print? For that matter, what did they even sound like?
To answer the second question: “it depends but mostly like the sonic equivalent being projectile-vomited face-first into a slaughterhouse.”
To answer the first: “because Rob Zombie did not allow it”.
Rob is a complicated guy. I have said as much before. A blunt but honest read is that he’s both the party most responsible for the band’s breakup and the primary legal obstacle to its older work being available. I’d psychoanalyze him as someone who loves other peoples’ pasts (his art is colored by the aesthetic seepage of Russ Meyer and Sam Peckinpah and Universal horror films and…) but who feels mainly disregard, alienation, or hatred for his own past. He’s a visual artist in the most Baudrillardian sense, a manipulator of images, and he seems to dislike the idea of a permanent record that fundamentally cannot be changed.
Even as a kid, I noticed that Rob (when interviewed) was reluctant to remember or reminisce—he’d give short non-answers, always railroading the conversation back onto his current project. (Guaranteed interview-killer question: “will you bring White Zombie back?”). He was impervious to nostalgia. A typical Rob Zombie setlist used to be “80% or so of his last album, plus some token past hits here and there” (lately he’s broadened out a bit). And when he parts ways with a musician, he generally does so permanently (there are two major—and again, recent—exceptions). To him, the past is very much a foreign country, and he’s in no hurry to renew his visa. I recall an impromptu fan Q&A session held on his MySpace page. The first question was something like “why won’t you play any old White Zombie songs live”? He replied with something like “because nobody knows them and I’ve forgotten them and there’s no point so thank you” and then basically never spoke to anyone on Myspace again. Fair enough. He moves on. Maybe we should too.
But in 2008, the de-facto omerta against White Zombie’s early years ended. Rob (likely motivated by a crazed WZ fan holding a gun to his head) finally surrendered and re-released the WZ back catalogue as a five-disc box set called Let Sleeping Corpses Lie. The title said it all—the only box he thought White Zombie belonged in was a coffin. It was a disappointing, poorly-packaged release with no liner notes and no input from band members other than Rob, and various ex-Zombies lined up to publicly barrack it. [1]via Crawdaddy!… https://blabbermouth.net/news/former-white-zombie-guitarist-talks-band-s-split-let-sleeping-corpses-lie-box-set
Crawdaddy!: I understand you had no input in “Let Sleeping Corpses Lie”, the WHITE ZOMBIE box set, at all?
Yuenger: Not at all.
Crawdaddy!: How did you find out it was happening?
Yuenger: They sent me and [former bassist] Sean [Yseult] mockups, like, two days before the release date. There was such little thought put into it. None of the photos were credited — we were like, “Uh, you know you have to credit photos or people can sue you?” And they were like, “Oh.” There were no liner notes, which are essential for something like that. I mean, the band had such an interesting story, how could you not have liner notes? I hear about it all the time from fans. They’re happy that the super rare early records are on there, that’s cool for them to hear, but the packaging sucks. Sean’s got all kinds cool shit — photos and flyers and stuff that they could have put in there.
[…] Crawdaddy!: I’m detecting an acceptance in your tone. Are there no hard feelings on your end?
Yuenger: Oh, sure there are. [Uncomfortable laughter]
Jay Yuenger, via Crawdaddy
and
Rock N Roll Experience: I thought it was lame that you & J. had no involvement with the White Zombie box set.
Sean: Yeah, I sent them some VHS’s & J. and I were both getting stuff together and next thing you know we were sent some proofs of, “here it is, it’s done!” & there was all kinds of mistakes on it, lack of credit to photographers and friends and band members and I was trying to make corrections and they were like, “Oh, it’s already being printed.” (laughs) It was a little bit of a fuck you to me & J. which was kinda weird since we were 2/3rd’s of the band but anyways…(laughs)
Sean Yseult, Via Rock-N-Roll Experience
Rob Zombie hates the past. When he’s allowed to define it, he does so in the most shoddy, careless, self-serving way possible.
In 2010, Sean Yseult published I’m in the Band, a tour diary and photobook of her years with White Zombie. Then in 2016 Numero Group released It Came from N.Y.C, a much better boxed set (it contains liner notes, audio remastered by Jay Yuenger, and even a pile of unreleased tracks from the Tim Jeffs era!) which may be as close to definitive as we ever live to see.
Or hear, if you’re a weirdo who opens a $150 boxed sets to listen to the music. Early White Zombie releases are incredibly different to their later incarnation as industrial metal titans: I cannot stress this enough. This is music by the sewer, of the sewer, for the sewer.
Its most listenable moments are scruffy unproduced proto-Pixies punk rock. Its most challenging are the ear-splitting avulsions and contortions of Soul-Crusher—storms of Michael Gira-esque noise that I cannot listen to for more than a few seconds with the volume dial past three. It’s a corrosive, hateful sound but a compelling one, mucus-slick and burning in the ear. It reminds me of a time I was really sick, and I vomited some stomach acid up my nose.
These records were recorded with some expense spared. You can very much hear (spiritually, if not literally) Rob’s roommates pounding on the wall, yelling “shut that racket off!” You might want to join them. I can easily believe this band did not have record labels banging on their door waving checks. I can also easily believe they did not have a door to bang on. This confused and confusing thing, nominally a band if not always practically, was simply not a thing that could be marketed or sold. This site, with early press, captures the confusion they inspired. Journalist after journalist simply doesn’t “get” the band at all, and are forced onto dreaded “quoting the band’s titles/lyrics” territory.
JUST what is a “slug motion dinosaur”? Have you ever had a “cannibal collision American girl suckin’ your gut”? Do you find the phrase “some kind of portable radio melted into her screaming legs” horrifying or just a bit of a ribtickler?….Christ what a lyric sheet!
– Billy Lucas
FROM the Pussy Galore strain of piss-off wrought iron thrash and trash, White Zombie have all the right titles–“Ratmouth”, “Diamond Ass”, etc., the right name and…..well, “Soul Crusher” is just right.
– Greg Fasolino
When you’ve reduced scumcore nowave countercultural journalists (used to extracting comprehensible prose from Thurston Moore, Glenn Branca, and Lydia Lunch) to saying “these weirdos and their song titles!” it’s possible we’re looking at a rough sell.
White Zombie had identity issues from the start. They changed genres basically every time they changed guitarists, and they did this a lot. Paul “Ena” Kostabi in ’85. Tim Jeffs in ’86. Tom “5” Guay in ’87. John Ricci in ’88. Jay Noel Yuenger in ’89. All of these men had different styles, different abilities, and different limitations.[2]This is something that remains true for Rob Zombie to this day. This is the central discordance: he’s a creative visionary whose music is heavily constrained by the abilities (or lack thereof) … Continue reading
The style shift from 1985’s Gods of Voodoo Moon (“badly-produced but tuneful punk rock with wailing guitar solos”) to Pig Heaven/Slaughter the Grey (“5-7 minute long long psychedelic rock noodle-fests”) is noticeable. Then Tom Guay joins, leading to the sky-dissolving noise-acid of 1987’s Psycho-Head Blowout and Soul-Crusher. The progression (or disintegration) of the band’s music is fascinating, but there’s not much here for me. “Gun Crazy” has a crazy mathcore riff that sounds like Dillinger Escape Plan or whatever and “Ratmouth” kind of has a chorus. Otherwise, all these songs run together and the track lengths feel like suggestions. 1989’s Let Them Die Slowly is a thrash metal album, if a bit noisy and slow. It has a weird phased-out quality and an empty lifeless mix. “Disaster Blaster” is the closest to a WZ deep cut we get here. You can see the chorus riff re-appear (faintly) in later songs like “Black Sunshine” and “Blur the Technicolor.” It’s most notable for where it’s pointing: toward metal, toward comprehensibility.
Running through a decade-long tumble of chaos and flux are two steel supports: Sean Yseult’s bass (she varies in how loudly she’s mixed but her playing is always aggressive and forceful) and Rob Zombie’s psychedelic day-glo horror lyrics and art. Rob’s vocals are not on the list. His voice and vocal approach changes and matures with time. In the early days, he is as unrecognizable as the rest of the band—a harsh nasal presence who usually doesn’t gel with the music at all. The guitar work of Tom Five and John Ricci is wildly expressionistic, but Rob is consistently unable to find his way in. He sounds like a karaoke singer howling over a song he doesn’t quite know (which may well be the truth). He has a weird tic where he delivers lines as anapests, stressing and cutting short final syllables. Howling out sound like a windsock, then stomping it flat. You hear this in, eg, “Power Hungry”:
“Fu-TURE! a-LIVE! ro-BOT! ciTY!”
According to Sean Yseult, his scatted-and-spat-out vocal rhythms were largely made up by him at the mic during recording sessions (which tended to be one-take affairs). Only later would he discovers his thunderous from-the-chest roar—along with producers who have heard of multitracking to thicken out a singer.
Let Them Die Slowly is a big leap forward in this regard, even if it’s onto a fad (thrash metal) that was already starting to die. 80s Metallica proves an overshadowing influence—”Demonspeed” is kinda just “Jump in the Fire” mixed with “No Remorse”, and most of the others are equally obvious in their derivation. But Rob’s vocals are now very close to his modern style.
In 1989, Jay Yuenger joins, and the band releases its final EP (God of Thunder). They are nearly in their final form here. Neither “Love Razor” and “Disaster Blaster II” are fantastic songs, but they’re clearly White Zombie songs. The only element still missing is the electronic samples (inspired by the hip hop, a’la Public Enemy, which was then everywhere in the Five Boroughs).
Yuenger is pretty clearly “the” White Zombie guitarist. The massive groove-thrash riffs underpinning Astro-Creep 2000 are phenomenal, and are captured in one of the heaviest guitar tones ever on a record. But the work of his predecessors is strange and interesting, and I had overlooked their influence until now. You’d wonder if some of Yuenger’s “edgier” riffs, like the one just before the verse of “Electric Head pt.2” (Is it F#sus2/4? F#add9? Whatever…) were always just an attempt to recreate Tom Guay’s wild noise-rock jangle.
It Came From N.Y.C. is fascinating as a record of where a band comes from. Do I like it, though? Well, it doesn’t want to be likeable, so I suppose it would have failed if I had.
No, I don’t want to hear any of these songs again, but I understand the band a bit better from hearing them. This is a group striking a nihilistic “fuck everything” pose from the gutters of Manhattan, only to decide they wanted some of that everything, so they conformed just a little bit. It suited them. They became my favorite band for years and years—hooky, ingenious, clever, and supremely heavy. I do not regret for a moment that we lost another Sonic Youth or the next Metal Machine Music, because we got La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One and Astro-Creep 2000 in trade (plus Rob’s solo music). Many experimental artists would be wise to follow the advice of “sell out as fast as possible”. Experimental art sucks, frankly.
This boxed set seems like it will be the end of White Zombie. The final stopping point. As Beavis and Butthead might comment “They were cool, and broke up before they stopped being cool.” What more can you hope for? Mourn not a dead zombie. That’s a common state for them to be in (perhaps even a fundamental one). Rather, rejoice and marvel at a zombie that was once alive…even if it was just for a fleeting moment, twenty years ago in the Lower East Side.
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