Artist: Zombie, Rob
Label: Universal Music Group
Release: 2013
Length: 38:45
Rating: 1.2/5
Shock rock is the brainchild the great Alice Cooper used to make his name back in the seventies, and plenty of others followed, hoping to score a gimmick of their own and win over a bit more of the crowd with makeup than they would have with just the music, minus the extra junk and theatrics on stage. Still, over a few decades quite a few standout names have piled up and kept the genre alive, and next to rock’s enfant terrible, who’s also, in the same breath, an outstanding intellectual and provocateur, Marilyn Manson, there’s undoubtedly a little corner for White Zombie’s former frontman, Rob Zombie. Less for any intellect in the lyrics or top-shelf music than for his proven talent for filmmaking and his consistent show of deep affection for corpses, little devils and everything that befits proper old-school horror. Four days after the premiere of the final film by the late David Lynch and Rob Zombie, Lords Of Salem, Rob’s fifth solo music project saw the light of day too, the record Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor.
And the first bait for the masses might be the fact that, after luring former David Lee Roth guitarist John 5 into the band (the talented one, and in his own way Marilyn Manson’s stage rival and competitor), he found a job in the group for Manson’s former drummer too, Kenneth Robert Wilson, better known as Ginger Fish. One last mention goes to the former member of Amen and Wednesday 13, bassist Matt Montgomery aka Piggy D., and it becomes clear right away that Rob has managed to poach a good chunk of modern stage theater, and especially it seems he’s decided to walk the path of the man who today carries the plaque of rock’s personified Satan, Mr. Marilyn Manson. And you can hear that path in the music too, my dears!
Opening movie snippet, a cheap B-grade horror intro, and then it’s time for jerking off into the void. Teenage Nosferatu Pussy is a Manson-esque knockoff where the guitars sound no different from the already-heard MM formula, there’s a bit of Hammond sound and some flirting with the Deep Purple sound in between, and the drums and bass are a little limp and damn stale. Already on the first track, which Zombie promoted on a 10-inch record pressed to play in reverse (did he really hope we’d fall for it and believe the music is satanic and therefore supposedly able to bewitch anyone?), it’s clear something’s off as far as lyrical weight goes. Rob grinds out kindergarten rhymes and leaves precious little impression. The follow-up, the first single Dead City Radio And The New Gods Of Supertown, shows a bit more potency, with even more organ while the guitars and rhythm stay on the same level, and Rob rambles on and on in his southern drawl while samples get crammed in that don’t have all that much to do with the song itself. OK, two missed shots don’t mean an automatic write-off. True, everything needs a bit of warming up, but after the grotesque crap of Revelation Revolution it all gets pretty limited and claustrophobically narrow-minded, unless you’re a die-hard goth party animal, and with a rocker attempt at speeding things up that turns out wildly misguided and brutal, but in a bizarrely empty way, Rob Zombie becomes just the right candidate to open for the new-age posers and former aces Bon Jovi. Theme For The Rat Vendor cuts through the grotesque with a bit of sitar meditation and oriental chill-out, and after a short instrumental the Scooby-Doo fairy tale continues with a song that has the potential to win the title of the most pointlessly named track of the decade – Ging Gang Gong De Do Gong De Laga Raga, with Zombie mixing in a bit of cheap porn and the smell of stale, well-ridden crotches of local skanks, which is what Rob Zombie and company have apparently become. I don’t know, but it all reminds me of the disappointment of listening to The Stooges’ album Weirdness, after which I started to doubt these were the same guys who’d been able to write Raw Power. Rock And Roll (In A Black Hole) is an industrial follow-up, with a fresh dose of crap right on the verse, and the chorus is the only thing that gives this track a bit of balls, but even those are borrowed from Marilyn Manson. Fuck!
Just when I thought every torture must end sometime, Rob reaches for a bit more drive, and judging by the stink wafting out of the speakers, it’s got everything going for it, but once you listen to the lyrics, you’re sorry you don’t hear English the way Ken Lee does, because it’s all form for form’s sake and there’s precious little substance. Behold, The Filthy Creatures! Only the closing solo, in the manner of a keyboard showdown with everything, turns out tasty, and a speck of good turns up under a ton of coprolitic excrement in the next track too, White Trash Freaks, after which I experience my first and so far only delight. Rob Zombie sets himself a challenge with high standards and decides to cover We’re An American Band, which the talented musicians of Grand Funk Railroad wrote decades ago. This time the track actually sounds right and tasty, and besides the cowbells Rob gives room to his own paraphrase of the vocals, this time adorned with hellish barking, and for the first time I’m actually having fun! But alas, all good things are short of breath and eventually end. Lucifer Rising is a Rammstein-style standard over Rob Zombie lyrics, and its stampede of unconvincing sonic rape and forced intensity rips like a sonic blast past the heart and compassion of my pen. The Girl Who Loved The Monsters doesn’t serve up anything either that Hellbilly Deluxe hasn’t already shat out, or any other recorded or heard record from the zombified discography of the once-imposing frontman, and after the short and obscurely cut-off Trade In Your Guns For A Coffin I even agree with what it proposes, hoping the guys in the band are truly ready to crawl back into the grave for a while. I know I’m hoping for too much, since the corpses in Rob Zombie’s world keep rising from the dead, and the creative stench from their lungs and bosoms is fittingly foul.
Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor doesn’t deviate in the slightest from the matrix of the already heard and already seen, and after the first listen of a record just over half an hour long it’s clear that Rob has stayed within the confines of his own template of horror caricature, cartoons, hillbilly visions of the apocalypse, Hell and redneck non-intellectualizing, and the music is accordingly limited and averse to experimenting or developing somewhat fuller songs. Put simply – there’s lots of trial and error, pointless stomping into the void, kitsch and naked striving for fun and a naive whiff of party rock, which bar by bar also chips away at the image of the once-praised lyricist and music icon who wrote White Zombie across the map of creation in capital letters, and judging by this, after going solo, with all the side preoccupations and effort, he has unfortunately run out of steam for musical potency and creating. This time the venomous rat can only feed the most obsessed fans, who won’t judge him too harshly, and he won’t win over any new fans with his fifth pile of feces, even though it’s sprinkled with sweet organs, hit-chasing Misfits-ish riffs and a rascally sense for low-quality, cheap humor. Listening to it killed my will to laugh as well as my will to keep listening to the record, which has only one bright side – the torture is over after a good half hour. Honestly, there’s only one perfect new candidate in this world for falling in love with this record – Izi from TV dober dan. You know: “If you want us to make love tonight, give me a kilo of crap and I’ll be yours!” Dear Izi, here’s a whole ladleful, help yourself!
Line-up
Rob Zombie – vocals
John 5 – guitar, backing vocals
Piggy D. – bass, backing vocals
Ginger Fish – drums, percussion
Production
Rob Zombie
Tracklist
- Teenage Nosferatu Pussy
- Dead City Radio And The New Gods Of Supertown
- Revelations Revolution
- Theme For The Rat Vendor
- Ging Gang Gong De Do Gong De Laga Raga
- Rock And Roll (In A Black Hole)
- Behold, The Pretty Filthy Creatures!
- White Trash Freaks
- We’re An American Band (Grand Funk Railroad cover)
- Lucifer Rising
- The Girl Who Loved Monsters
- Trade In Your Guns For A Coffin
