Frank Zappa -- CIVILIZATION PHASE III (Barking Pumpkin)

This is the very last thing that Zappa worked on before his untimely death to cancer. It is what he refers to as an "opera-pantomime, with choreographical physical activity (manifested as dance or other forms of inexplicable sociophysical communication)." In 1976, Zappa had a band called the Mothers of Invention. At the time, they were busy in New York City recording their next album. One day, Zappa decided to put a few mics underneath the grand piano, put a heavy drape over the piano and a brick on the sustain pedal. Over the next four or more days, he would invite people to sit "inside" the piano and just ramble on for hours on end. Occaisionally, he would "talk" to them from the producer's control booth by saying things such as "this is how the pigs work the smoke" and these piano dwellers (as he referred to them) would either use this as a cue for the direction of their discussion or whatever. Some of these discussions turned up on the LUMPY GRAVY album.

Zappa had intended to splice and edit the recordings as he saw fit, but this proved to be very problematic. The reason for this was that any edit didn't sound convincing enough due to the levels of "pan-chromatic resonance and other highly ambient domains" in the recordings. The result is that the ambient hiss (noise floor) would abruptly vanish at the edit points. And so, this was all shelved for a time when technology would better accomodate his needs. In the meantime....

In later years, Zappa began working with the synclavier and coming up with his own compositions. In 1991, he made some new piano discussion recordings with the Ensemble Moderne and his daughter Moon, amongst others. Digital technology allowed him to make the edited conversations flow seemlessly and appear to be a contiguous part of the music. These two discs comprise both the piano discussion recordings as well as his complex synclavier recordings (some of which cannot physically be played by a human being). He finished working on this recording a week before he passed away. In the end, some of the most strikingly beautiful and awe-inspired compositions, balanced by often bizarre and humorous discussions amongst the various piano people are presented in two acts. A true masterpiece and certainly the crowning jewel for all his works. Rest in peace, Zappa. [yol]

This is bizarre. Brilliant, but bizarre nonetheless. Imagine industrial death metal with disemboweled gutter-stench vocals, crazed industrial percussion and assorted weird mayhem, and the occasional toy piano (!) or other equally twisted instrument, all trying to squash your head into paste, and presto! you have entered the land of Zaraza! (It's Polish for "death," i think.) This is good stuff -- it takes in all the good things about death metal (ugly noises, disturbed/cranky croak-vocals, pummelling guitars/drums) and leaves out the bad stuff (cheesy Satan fixations, pointless "shock tactics," dumb weenie-widdling solos, and all that crap), which pouring in lots of industrial sludge just to make things thicker. They also toss in a warped and punishing cover of Swans' "A Screw," which certainly doesn't hurt. The guys in this band are Polish (even though they're from Canada), so they lyrics sometimes wander into cryptic stuff that I don't really get, but you don't need to be Polish (or Canadian, for that matter) to understand that this is intense stuff. Definitely better than most of the cheesy death-type stuff i've been hearing lately (as good as 13 even!).

No clue as to the deep 'n mysterious meaning of their name; sure is hard to remember, though. If i were them, i'd change the name to Dead Sheep Pimp, but what do i know? The cd packaging is primitivism at its finest (that is, right on the borderline of where you can't decide if it looks that way because they were cheap or if they're working some deconstructionist mojo or whatever). As for the cd itself, it's thumping beatbox music, most likely of the homegrown variety -- a bit iffy in the production department (those are some seriously cheesy-sounding beats / tones in places), but really insanely catchy, especially on "human factory." Their sound reminds me of a lot of eighties keyboard bands (and that may be down to their equipment choices, which remain a mystery to me) -- Depeche Mode, Erasure, and other bands of that era come to mind while listening to tracks like "oh i am" and "never-ending ninja," and the only thing that saves them from turning into total kitsch is that they're pretty good at (certainly catchier than most of what passes for keyboard-pop these days). The booming, freak-style vox take a bit of getting used to, though. By the time they get to stuff like "kissing backwards," which his a beat so big you could own clubs with it, i start to wish they had much better production so my stereo would hop 'n bop too. It would be interesting to hear this done with better-sounding equipment and improved production -- given their high level of catchiness, that could well lead to making them filthy rich someday. (Although i'm still not so sure about the singing style, but then... i spend all my time lately listening to pained blackmetal shrieking, so what do i know?) It would certainly help turn stuff like "i want results," with its pounding temper-tantrum at the end, into something truly monstrous in its heaviness. And we all know how important that is, right?

Zeke were always one of those bands that I never really paid much attention to. I heard a disc here, a compilation or tribute appearance there. Their previous full-lengths never made much of an impression on me ("Hmmm... loud, fast, sounds like the Dwarves... whatever"). I liked their compilation appearances; they were one of the top bands on Reptilian Records' AC/DC tribute and their version of Iron Maiden's "Wrathchild" on last year's FREE THE WEST MEMPHIS THREE benefit disc kicked all kinds of ass... but it didn't make up for the full-lengths.

Then I received a copy of DEATH ALLEY. I popped it into my player, and broke into a big shit-eating grin. I don't quite know what happened... something must have clicked when they did the Maiden tune last year. Suddenly Zeke have decided that their mission in life is to become the punk rock version of Iron Maiden.

And it works big time. I'm not exaggerating the Maiden comparison, Mark (vox/guitar) sounds uncannily like Paul DiAnno. The rest of the band toss out solos and riffs that could have come straight off KILLERS (amped up to the nth degree).... The song "Arkansas Man" is a redneck speed-freak rewrite of "Wrathchild." I could go on and on.... DEATH ALLEY is easily the best punk record I've heard this year. [n/a]

This thirty-seven track monster of a disc is Zeke's parting shot to their fans. All in all it's not a bad deal. The eight unreleased studio tracks are all quite bad-ass, with the four outtakes from DEATH ALLEY being particularly bad-ass. I'm not sure when the other four unreleased studio tracks were recorded, but they have the Dwarves, Motorhead, and Maiden sound that characterized DEATH ALLEY.

The live stuff: I never caught Zeke live so I can't say how representative it is. The sound quality varies, the liner notes say that everything was recorded live to DAT -- which seems about right to me. At its best it sounds like a high quality bootleg. At its worst (the hidden track, for example) it sounds like it was recorded on a mini-disc recorder stashed in some guy's jacket. The song selection is good, spanning their entire career.

I'm not what you'd call huge Zeke fan, but I have to say that this disc has spent a lot of time in my stereo. Fans should be all over this. For those who missed out (or never paid attention) when they were together, this would serve as a pretty good introduction. [N/A]

I stumbled across this at Sound Exchange and of course had to pick it up, especially since it's insanely hard to find. A cassette-only release from K.K. Null's own label that has technically never been released and is out of print (which raises the question, of course -- why is it being reviewed here then? the answer: so if YOU should happen to stumble across it and are contemplating buying it, you'll have information to go by... not that this is likely to happen, granted, but still, one never knows), whether or not you want it (assuming you can find it) largely depends on how devoted you are to Zeni Geva, i guess. NAI-HA sounds better and is overall still the best live ZG available so far; LIVE IN AMERIKA features brutal performances similar to the ones on this tape, but that release is unfortunately sabotaged by a hideous mix (it's definitely, uh, LIVE... not to mention sounds like the mike is sitting in the next county, which is real frustrating, since the performances are immensely bad-ass). Nearly all of the material here is available elsewhere, so the main attraction of the tape is to get the two otherwise unreleased songs "Godkill" and "Vast Impotenz," two monolithic, lurching piles of subatomic riffdeath. The tape's worth the price (well, within REASON) for these two tracks alone. Plus the black and white cover of a mutant skeleton figure is pretty happening too. Cool to have, but not necessarily indispensable, unless you're as totally crazed about Zeni Geva as DEAD ANGEL is....

Zeni Geva -- MAXIMUM MONEY MONSTER [Pathological]

One of the earliest efforts from this band and still one of the best, from the opening plod-trance of the title track (all sixteen or so minutes of it) to the totally bizarre cover of Brecht's "On Suicide," complete with wailing background vocals ripped off from Pink Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky." If David Gilmour gave up the giant pigs and smoke machines to play for a death metal band, it would probably sound an awful lot like this.

Want to totally polarize everyone you know, splitting them into one camp entranced with awe and the other foaming with insane, annoyed rage? Play "Slam King." A plodding, trance-inducing drone with one riff (but it's a whopper) that goes on and on... and on... and on.... Null spends the last four minutes or so screaming one word (skull? stull? don't? damned if I know, but whatever it is, he sounds like he means it) over and over until you'll become convinced that your CD player is stuck. Guaranteed to totally alienate ninety percent of the planet on the first listen.

The rest of the album is a bit more "reasonable," in its own peculiar fashion. "Blaze" thrashes away briefly before Null drags out the instruments of sonic torture for "Sweetheart," in which he manages to make his guitar sound like it's being brutally sodomized. "Guystick Bodie" actually kind of swings with a perverted semi-funk feel, but it's definitely not the Red Hot Chili Peppers by any means-- dirty, howling guitars waver in thick sheets as Null rambles on in what could either be unintelligble English or untranslatable Japanese, a sonic hurricane in search of a town to evaporate. "War Pig" isn't the Black Sabbath standard, but it has the feel down right, with slow, grinding riffs and shouted vocals that bludgeon you into submission before giving way to the aforementioned "On Suicide," where a tribal beat and surprisingly melodic vocals spiral down into a well of weird soloing that brings the album to a close.

Not quite as brutally heavy or deathbound as later works, this one is still one of the strongest simply by the force of its innovative theft and mutation of Western ideas; by the time Null gets through wrestling his peculiar concept of Floydian guitar histronics to the ground and beating them senseless, what you're left with is weird, cool, and quite often sounds like it came from another planet. Check it out.

Zeni Geva -- NAI-HA [NG]

You probably have no idea what "nai-ha" actually means, but from the way singer/guitarist K. K. Null screams it over and over in the title track, you'd quickly guess that it's probably unpleasant. (In fact, it loosely means "broken inside." The title track itself is apparently about the gruesome aftermath of an auto accident.)

Unpleasantness is the general theme of the entire album, not terribly surprising for a group with such a forbidding sound. Even though the lyrics (what few exist) are almost entirely in Japanese, the bottom-heavy production (courtesy of Steve Albini, of Big Black/Rapeman/Shellac fame) and obvious references to brutal noisemasters like Godflesh and Swans, convey the attitude of death and misery regardless of the language barrier.

From the ferocious kamikaze-drummer attack of "Autobody" to the closing hightone mayhem of "Terminal Hz," a jagged roar of rumbling noise, windlike guitar, and lumbering drums that sounds remarkably like a slow- motion earthquake, the three-piece band (augmented by Albini on "Angel," where he contributes extra guitar) alternates between bludgeoning the listener into submission and tossing out unexpected surprises (the violins in the second half of "Autobody," the chimelike guitar and whispered vocals of "Angel"). The occasional moments of prettiness, though, don't deter the band for a moment from achieving its real goal -- namely, to obliterate everything in its musical path. This it does with savage vigor, like a musical samurai with guitars instead of swords.

With a huge sound reminiscent of Godflesh in its heavy bottom and impossibly high-end guitar tones, resulting in almost no midrange, it's hard to believe that there are only three people in the band, and no bass at all. Half the time it sounds like the band is playing in a huge, cathedral-like cave; there's a surprising magnitude of space going on here. Null's decidedly unorthodox guitar playing ranges from slow-motion death plod to dizzying bursts of speed, and quite often his guitar sounds like some demented transmission from another world far beyond our solar system. Remember the egg chamber in the original ALIEN movie? This album is what the facehuggers were listening to down there.

What saves the record from sounding like an impenetrable wall of sludge are a combination of Albini's sure-handed engineering and production, along with the band's precise grasp of noise, dynamics, and song construction. The high point of the album is "Angel," an eerie, midtempo tune with chiming guitars and a truly subhuman bass crawl that abruptly shifts into sonic overdrive from time to time, when you least expect it, before returning to its original hypnotic structure. For enthusiasts of maximum heaviosity, the second half of "Nai-Ha" degenerates into a pounding, crunch-laden riff much like a jackhammer trying to bore through your skull. Anybody into sheer, painful heaviness should check this one out.

Zeni Geva -- TRANS EUROPE EXPERIENCE [Charnel / Nux Organization]

Sounds like all that side work with Yona-Kit and Brise Glace has done something WEIRD to K. K. Null's head... the two new tracks on this compilation of new stuff, studio rerecordings, and live dates sound like old-style Zeni Geva on a collision course with mutant avant-funk. Kind of... uh, SCARY, actually. But there's no question that "Death Blows" is one of the most monumentally heavy things they've ever done, particularly with its riveting supersonic bassline (not to mention Null's splendid death croak). "Interzona" continues the twitch and funk spasm movements equally well, breaking down into a bizarre overheated funk-bass riff that, in true ZG style, goes on for quite a while before returning to the heavy riffdeath. Yow. I... i like. I hope the forthcoming album sounds like more of this.

As for the rest of the CD -- what IS this obsession ZG has with recording a million versions of everything it does? Fully two-thirds of DESIRE FOR AGONY gets retooled here, and i'm not sure it's all to good effect -- i still like the original version of "Dead Sun Rising" better, even though this one IS much heavier. The new version of "Whiteout," though, totally crushes; it's got a LOT more rumble this time around... a good thing. The live versions of "Love Bite" and "Autopsy Love," however... hmmm... i dunno... at least the latter chugs like a hellbent locomotive, even if the sound is a little unbalanced.

All in all... hmmm... i think they call this a STOPGAP. (!) The two new tracks hold real promise for the forthcoming album, though. Still, this is mainly for the hardcore ZG zealots....

Zeni Geva / Superunit -- NAI-HA + EP [Nux / Skin Graft]

This is one mondo kind of bad-ass idea... re-releasing Zeni Geva's finest moment with new, superior packaging and a bonus EP for those unlucky enough to miss out on the destruction the first time around. A wee bit o' history: A few years back, the itty-bitty label NG released NAI-HA and ALL RIGHT YOU LITTLE BASTARDS! one after another. The first was arguably ZG's finest moment in the studio; the later was a pretty respectable live album with a couple of appearances by producer Steve Albini. Thanks to shamefully pissy distribution, both sold out instantly, as they were scooped up by Nullheads already in the know... leaving those who came to the table much later to walk away empty-handed. Drifting across the land came the familiar refrain: "WAH! Those who should know tell me that NAI-HA is totally the shit, but can i find it? The answer is no! I cry myself to sleep at night knowing i will never hear this mighty slab o' sonic doom! WAH! WAH! WAH!"

Enter... SANDMAN! (No, wait, wrong gig....) Well, actually, um, make that Skin Graft. The original CD with its semi-okay cover and cryptic liner notes (what little of them existed) have been magically TRANSFORMED into a gatefold-sleeve with colors that burn like fire (fire-orange for the skull and bolts on the front, orange and yellow for the inner plumbing on the back, orange and pink for the gastrointestinal delights on the inner gatefold). You also get lyrics in English for the first time (not that they're really a huge revelation -- they're pretty much what you kind of expected, namely lots of blood and death), AND a nifty fold-out poster, PLUS the one-sided 12" EP of two tracks by Superunit, featuring ZG augmented by Steve Albini and the mysterious Mas-P. What more could you ask for? (Besides for something to have actually been on the second side of the EP, i mean....)

So, the platters themselves. Well, the NAI-HA disc is... uh... well, it's NAI-HA, which i already reviewed many many moons ago. About the only thing that's changed is that in the remastering process, they "corrected" the high end -- the sound is a lot warmer and fatter on vinyl than on the CD. It's also nowhere near as intense, unfortunately (or at least it seems that way to moi... but then, my hearing's being slowly destroyed by listening to all this stuff at Concorde-level volumes, so interpret that as ye will). As for the Superunit disc, it's two tracks, helpfully entitled "One" and "Two." Heh. They are both apparently the unreleased studio tracks Null referred to in the interview DEAD ANGEL conducted with him in the first issue (or was it the second? so long ago...). The first is "Kettle Lake" (the live version of which appears on BASTARDS); the second one might be "Painwise," although it's so tremendously devolved that it's kind of hard to say. Both are swank enough to make one wish they had thrown some more material on the other side, but oh well... those crazy artists, you know how they are....

Thou canst rejoice -- Japan's bestest-mostest band of intense heaviness has returned, finally, after several years of letting Null poot around releasing lots of solo discs that all sound basically alike (he's heavily into this electrodeath by nullsonic loop phase, which is interesting in limited doses, but gets a bit tiring after a dozen or more releases). For those not hep to ZG's death by cryptic immolation schema, here's the blueprint: Back in the late eighties, former members of Boredoms and YBO2 combine their mutant DNA and equal amounts of Swans, Kraftwerk, and Pink Floyd to release a couple of albums that eventually get repackaged as MAXIMUM MONEY MONSTER. Then they lose the Floyd fixation, beef up on the Swans/Kraftwerk axis, get ten thousand times heavier, and release several balls-out discs like TOTAL CASTRATION and NAI-HA (one of the greatest heavy albums of all time). About that point, Null's solo career starts an upward trajectory and ZG put out a few albums that are merely okay as opposed to earth-shattering, then they disappear entirely (outside of a few compilation appearances and singles) for five or six years.

Now... they are BACK. If you've been following their career for a while, though, this new release may not seem all that new -- in addition to five totally new songs, it includes reworkings of two earlier ones and a "sequel" of sorts to another, which makes things a mite confusing. One of of those reworkings, "Auto-fuck," is also a song that they've recorded approximately a billion times (or so it seems). I would assume that these recordings (made with Steve Albini behind the recording desk, as always) are to be considered the "definitive" version, although I'm absolutely convinced at this point that they'll still be redoing "Auto-fuck" on Null's deathbed lo these many moons in the future....

Regarding the new disc, then -- it is brilliant, o my brothers (and sisters, although I can't think of a single woman I know who listens to ZG; they are pretty much a guy thing). For one thing, they've refined their sense of dynamics and playing skills to the point where they shift gears radically and effortlessly all over the place, incorporating psych moves, trance rock, and pure pummeling death metal into increasingly complicated song structures, all without sounding forced. This is especially true on the title track, whose introduction keeps getting heavier and more ridiculously complex until it abruptly turns into an exercise in guitar minimalism, at which point Null's menacing vox carry them over to the next movement, another series of complex riffs over drums that sound more like construction scaffolding being erected than actual beats. And that's just the first song. Interesting psych/trance guitar figures show up in the new, improved "Implosion" as well, and the re-recorded version of "Auto-fuck" benefits greatly from improved precision in playing (this recording is also much better than previous ones, with far more clarity).

The best tracks on the album are the dizzying "Blastsphere" -- which begins with thundering drums and a heavy, slo-mo fuzzdeath riff and rapidly devolves into frenzied but highly controlled high-speed chaos as the two guitarists take off into totally different directions, getting faster, harder, and more crazed before they take a chill break for some minimalist psych guitar that gradually creeps back up into another punishing round of pure bushido fury -- and "Hazchem," which starts off like something from earlier ZG (lots of thrashing about and Null screaming "Destroy yourself!"), only to abruptly switch to a tranced-out and highly psychedelic hypnodeath groove, sort of like a beefed-up Kraftwerk spacing out on windowpane acid. The rest of the tracks are pretty boss in their own right, especially "Interzona 2," which is not only a huge improvement over the original (on FREEDOM BONDAGE, if you care) but also sports colossal thunder-chords and ping-ping guitars, sounding much like what they'd have played at Roman coliseums before feeding the Christians to the lions if they'd had amplifiers back then. A swell return to form; here's hoping they don't take so long with the next one.

Zeni Geva / Palace Contribution -- "Sides 5 & 6" [Skin Graft]

At last, the latest installment in Skin Graft's ongoing tribute to AC/DC. You should know the routine by now -- each single features two or three bands covering/deconstructing a fave tune originally pooped out by the Brothers Young. This time it's Zeni Geva and Palace Contribution. The ZG side totally crushes; the new drummer (dunno his name, the single couldn't be bothered with providing any band info) sounds like a one-man wrecking crew, Null and Tabata sound like they've been eating massive amounts o' speed and steroids, and their deconstruction is a pretty fearsome one. Essentially the main riff over and over until it stops for a weird break before cranking up again, with no lyrics to speak of, just a big fat wall o' doom. Yow! All must worship! The PG side, though, is spoo. What they've done to "Big Balls" (watered-down, almost nonexistent instrumentation, goofy overechoed overlapping vocals) should be illegal. But i never cared for that song all that much anyway, so it doesn't matter. The single's worth owning for the ZG side alone.

As for the scribbly, incoherent "art" inside, well, that just means your single costs more... great cover, though.

Zeni Geva / X-Rated-X -- "Hate Trader / Dog Eat Dog" [Erase Yer Head]

Hmmm... this is OK. Zeni Geva's "Hate Trader" isn't the best thing they've ever done -- it's heavy but doesn't have the eerie dread that accompanies their best stuff -- but it IS plenty thunderous, for the most part. Sounds suspiciously like a reworked version of "Autobody" at times, though... but the wind-tunnel guitar during the plodding part is GREAT. Now we turn it over... and... geez, THIS is what the Zeni Geva track should have sounded like: heavy, ominous, more guitars than you can shake a weiner dog at, crazed behavior, lots of shouting, hey -- this is COOL. And these guys are French, even (!) Unfortunately, they're also nonexistent now, since they broke up before this record even came out. Bummer. The gatefold sleeve boasts a lot of nasty childish scrawling/vaguely obscene art that's most mondo, plus there's even more of it on the enclosed insert. If nothing else, check it out for the twisted art....

Warren Zevon -- MUTINEER [Giant Records]

You know, once upon a time Zevon could do no wrong, back in the days when he regularly churned out such classics as "Excitable Boy," "Werewolves in London," "The Envoy," "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," "Lawyers, Guns and Money," "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," etc., etc., etc. Then he turned in a big-time drunk and got his bad self dropped from his original label, and nothing's been the same since. He cleaned up his act a few years ago and released the stunning SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE, and it looked like he was back on track... but everything since then has fallen firmly in the territory of "eeeeeh, i don't know, mon... sounds half-baked...." So he's long-overdue for a brilliant comeback, see?

Well, this ain't it. It's not bad -- but it's not all that GOOD, either. Most of the songs fall into one of two camps: the Questionable Judgement ("Warren! what the HELL is all this crap about lonesome clowns?") or the Repeat Performance (ie., "Seminole Bingo," which is actually pretty good -- the story of a junk-bond trader on the run from the SEC and entranced by the lure of bingo parlors -- but sounds an awful lot like "Sentimental Hygiene"; other tracks crib unabashedly from previous glories as well). This is not generally the mark of brilliance, am i right? The man sounds like he's in a holding pattern, showing up for work to keep himself out in the public eye while waiting for true inspiration to strike again. He's not helping himself here, either, by the inclusion of two truly stupid songs ("Poisonous Lookalike" and "Rottweiler Blues," the latter of which reads lyrically like it was written by Hunter S. Thompson on a really cranky day, which should be great but in reality falls flat), a mistake he's never made before. Oh well, nobody's perfect all the time....

He makes up for all of this, though (well, almost) with "The Indifference of Heaven," a hypnotic track nuked by savagely funny and sardonic lyrics ("They say, 'Everything's all right' / They say, 'Better days are near' / They tell us, 'These are the good times' / But they don't live around here / Billy and Christie don't / Bruce and Patti don't / They don't live around here"). He should have waited until he had nine more songs of this quality and he would have crushed the world beneath his heels, but he didn't, so we're stuck with this instead. Sigh....

Rob Zombie -- HELLBILLY DELUXE [Geffen]

Okay, i have a metaphysical question: So if the whole point of making this here solo album was, as Rob Z. originally claimed, to escape the confines of White Zombie and do something different, then... uh... why does this disc sound exactly like White Zombie?

Ha! I laugh at you, for it was a TRICK QUESTION! Obviously the whole point was for Rob to make a White Zombie without interference from the rest of the band (although this is, technically, half of White Zombie, since drummer John Tempesta plays on nearly all of this disc). It should tell you volumes that Rob left the fate of White Zombie in limbo until this actually came out, at which point he saw that it debuted higher than any album by White Zombie has ever even charted, at which point he called up the rest of the band and dissolved White Zombie. (Apparently they were expecting the call, since bassist Sean Yseult's new band Famous Monsters had their debut album scheduled for release this month. No word yet on what guitarist J. plans on doing.) Of course, now that Rob is White Zombie, that means all the cash goes in his pocket, but of course I'm sure that observation never even crossed his mind....

So anyway, Rob's made this album that might as well be a White Zombie album and it's all right. Full o' big crunchy guitars and thub-thub drums and Rob growling about living dead girls and superbeasts and the usual comic-book-influenced hoo-ha. Good work if you can get it! The graphics are pretty stupendous -- image has always been a big chunk of White Zombie's appeal -- and this time he's got a mishmash of paintings, cartoons, fake ads, and faux comic-book panels to give wing to the album's subtitle, "13 Tales of Cadaverous Cavorting Inside the Spookshow International" (Rob sure is a wordy son of a bitch, isn't he? By the way, this is good a place as any to point out that while i have no problem with this obsessive monster-movie fetish, lyrically speaking i vastly prefer the earlier albums where he spouted hallucinatory non-sequeiturs and sounded genuinely deranged.) This album also continues the move made on the last two White Zombie albums of incorporating lots o' electronics and vaguely techno-gone-metal drums and stuff in addition to the ubiqitous horror movie keyboards and samples.

The best song on the album is probably "Superbeast," which is essentially a rewrite of "Supercharger Heaven," which was in turn pretty much a rewrite of "Black Sunshine," and that was an attempt to fix "Demonspeed." So we immediately deduce that originality is not Rob's strong suit, eh? But that's beside the point, since this is (what passes for these days, anyway) a metal album, and originality in metal is kind of a liability (dig up Dawn Crosby and ask her if you want to know about that). In fact, critical assessment of this slab o' shiny tin can be summed up in one pithy sentence, mon: if you liked ASTRO CREEP 2000, then you'll like this, because they're basically the same album. "The Ballad of Resurrection Joe," one of two cuts featuring Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee on the thub-thubs (the other is "Meet the Creeper"; both were laid down while Tommy was hiding out at Rob's house during the Great Purloined Dirty Video debacle), which keeps cycling from low-key and sinister to heavier and ominious to totally crazed, like the whole song is on a loop. Other hep moves include the lurching fuzz o' "Living Dead Girl," general heaviness everywhere ("Dragula," "Demonoid Phenomenon," "Return of the Phantom Stranger," etc., etc.), and the odd (and unexpected) instrumental "Perversion 99." But really, if you've heard ASTRO CREEP 2000, then you already know how this sounds. Let your tolerance for badfilm obsessiveness be your conscience as you stroll to the record store....

This is a big improvement over HELLBILLY DELUXE (the remix thing doesn't count, okay?) in all departments. The songs are better, and the merging of the organic and artificial sounds (and the integration of the obligatory samples) comes across in a more natural fashion this time around. I'm guessing that the first time out he was still getting used to calling all the shots for the first time and now he's getting down to serious business. For one thing, he's using a real orchestra this time out for the showbiz parts, and he's got a real interesting mix going of obviously mechanical sounds, samples, live musicians, and sonic effluvia.He starts to percolate pretty early on with "Sinners Inc.," the eerie and throbbing ambient disco intro that segues into "Demon Speeding," a juicy take on the machine-like, fuzzed-out heavy metal disco he discovered toward the end of White Zombie. "Dead Girl Superstar" is the turbocharged rewrite of "Supercharger Heaven," and the rest of the album follows in similar, familiar fashion.... I do believe Mr. Zombie has ripped a page from the Big Book o' AC/DC and decided that the best way to stake out a lengthy career in da biz is to get really fucking good at a handful of things, then do them over and over until it hurts. Refinement vs. progression, if you will. As you might suspect, only a really good band can pull this off for any length of time; fortunately for the shareholders in Zombie Inc., Mr. Zombie has a pretty sharp head on his shoulders.

A cursory glance at the song titles will tell you right away that his basic aesthetic hasn't changed -- "Sinners Inc.," "Dead Girl Superstar," "Transylvanian Transmissions Pt. 1," "Bring Her Down (to Crippletown)," "House of 1,000 Corpses," etc., with lots of artwork taken from or heavily influenced by horror movies. (It is the first in a while to not make copious use of cartoon bimbos, which is too bad. It does, however, feature dead girls, naked girls, fetish babes, gas masks, cool movie stills, and lots of long black hair.) The whole package builds on the same kind of presentation on White Zombie's ASTRO CREEP: 2000 and his own HELLBILLY DELUXE (which is not a bad thing, since Zombie has always been an amazing graphic artist), although he's basically jettisoned the science-fiction elements for a continuous shock-horror homage. If that floats your boat, then you should be shellin' out the clams for this one.

Regardless of what you might think of Zombie's determination to milk the basic sound and structure of ASTRO-CREEP: 2000 for all eternity (i'm okay with it, incidentally), it must be noted that his execution of the concept has gotten considerably more complex and sophisticated. These songs are carefully layered with changes in texture and samples and weird sounds that they often sound like a river of sound (or an outright movie soundtrack) over a heavy disco beat. And Zombie himself is in fine form, with a boatful of his trademark twisted, shock-horror movie lyrics and his whole delivery refined to the point where he might as well be part of the rhythm section. His genius, manifested in brilliant fashion here, is in building an album so crammed full of highly catchy weirdness that you could come back to it again and again over the years and still find things you hadn't heard before. This is what Trent Reznor could have done with THE FRAGILE if he weren't so hellbent on whining between the heavy parts and so determined to fly his art flag. Rob Zombie knows it's a lot sexier to live by the motto "Fuck art, let's dance." Even if it's with a dead girl superstar.

Look out, the milkman cometh.... Rob's sure gotten good at keeping the product cycle going, hasn't he? And here we have the latest offering, a double-disc affair with a pile of songs on cd and a (smaller) pile of videos on the DVD. Digipak format, with a fat-ass color booklet consisting of pix o' the Dreaded One from all phases of his career (yes, he admits that White Zombie was once a lot more interesting than it later became, if only in the pix), the current band live and otherwise, and more of Rob's horror-fu. The music disc collects up a half-dozen of late-period White Zombie tracks (including "Feed the Gods" and "I'm Your Boogie Man" from AIRHEADS and THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS) and a bunch more solo Zombie tracks, most from the albums, along with a few compilation / soundtrack cuts like the cover of "Blitzkrieg Bop" from the Ramones tribute WE'RE A HAPPY FAMILY. And of course, just to suck you in if you already have all that stuff, there's two new tracks ("Two-Lane Blacktop" and "Girl on Fire"), and you're either down with it or not, so if you are, you need it, right? Right? Uhhhh....

The DVD is a pretty reasonable compilation of ten videos, apparently uncut, two from the tail end of White Zombie's run ("Thunder Kiss '65" and "More Human Than Human"), the rest from the first two Zombie solo discs. They're okay if you dig Rob's increasingly obsessive interest in classic horror movies and video / culture-spoofing, although they tend toward cheesiness and an excruciating passion for overly bright primary colors. "Living Dead Girl" cribs from THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and FRANKENSTEIN, "Never Gonna Stop" borrows its set largely from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and the "Feel So Numb" video -- with Rob and the band performing on a U.S. flag-themed sci-fi set of bright lights and chrome, while simultaneously spoofing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video -- is so surreal that I can't decide if Rob's serious or if it's intentionally ridiculous or ironic or what. Full of cute punk / metal girls, though. The slo-mo moves of "Return of the Phantom Stranger" (in a cemetery! in black and white! woo!) are pretty amusing, but most of the videos here are way too saturated with MTV cheese and the White Zombie ones don't show anywhere near enough of Sean Yseult. So... whatever....

John Zorn - MASADA LIVE [Jazz Door]

This is actually a bootleg, i have discovered. It was recorded in NY City in 1994 during a time when Kenny Wollesen was playing drums instead of Joey Baron. Features Zorn on alto sax, Greg Cohen on bass and Dave Douglas on trumpet. Let's put it this way: one can never have enough Masada. Need any more be said? Just like their studio albums, it is utterly stunning to listen to the display of utter harmony between the members. This disc gives a really good peek at the manic energy which has been attained at their live gigs. The sound quality is excellent (straight off the board, i'm certain) and unlike the ripoff prices of bootlegs today, it was priced between average domestic and import store costs. [yol]