Much like the collaborative work of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, there’s an untouchable trinity of Rob Zombie musical efforts - Astro-Creep 2000 with White Zombie, Hellbilly Deluxe, and The Sinister Urge. Not before, and not since, has anyone produced music that sounds quite like those three, and it’s a niche that the market has been failing to fill ever since, with apologies to the early works of Rob’s brother Spider and Powerman 5000, and if we’re being generous The Sickness. (Sidebar: The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From New York, for those trying to wrack their brains.)
Then for a while, Zombie kind of wandered in the woods musically. In his defense, he was embarking on a bankable film career, and how much creative juice does a person really have at any one time? Anyway, what we got in the interim was the up-and-down (mostly down) Educated Horses (though I adore the excellent The Scorpion Sleeps.) The various and sundry albums that followed are numerous and immemorable.
And so we get to The Great Satan, Zombie’s newest offering. It pulses with promise - the cover art is a needed throwback to the days of some of Rob’s best imagery, the carnival-turned-twisted-pop-art that’s worked well for him for so long. The early singles and accompanying videos promised a balance between Rob’s bombastic costumes of the past and the overdriven punk rock that propelled him to superstardom. If Zombie needed a comeback, and if it was ever in the cards, The Great Satan held the most concerted promise of it.
There are…glimpses…of Zombie’s great potential on the record. “Heathen Days” is the first cut that seems like it could have come from the same universe that produced “Superbeast.” Would that the mix were more guitar-forward, as the riff is simple but hooking, and leads into the chorus with an aggressive bite that deserves more space amidst the trademark Zombie morass.
“Out of Sight” is a virile rock romp that comes across like the logical evolution of where Zombie’s sound could have (and evidently did,) go after 1998. The track is a little more muted than the explosiveness Zombie so often exhibits, but the changing beats and descending scales only serve to make the chorus pop all the more.
Then at the end we get served “Unclean Animals,” and there’s a song like this on all Zombie records - think “Blood, Milk and Sky” or “Return of the Phantom Stranger” or “House of 1000 Corpses,” or “Lords of Salem,” and you’re on the right track. It’s big, it’s brooding, it’s dark, it shambles along with re-mixed vocals and appropriate dread. It does the job.
Maybe that’s the real takeaway here - The Great Satan does the job. That’s about it. It has some pitfalls - for only having twelve real songs (there are some throwaway interludes, as one is wont to do,) and for having none that are longer than 3:46, the record feels too long. Whether that’s because it simply runs out of gas, or because there’s a thematic and aural similarity between many of the tracks is to be determined, but it drags in the back half. Also, no one would ever say Zombie was a particularly erudite lyricist (“Demonoid Phenomenon / Get It Out / Get it On”) but he had a way of creating a bizarre, fun, otherworldly vision that seemed spooky but attractive. If there was ever any nuance there, it’s been replaced on this record by Zombie’s heavy reliance on profanity, and as we all know, profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.
Again, back to where we started - damning with faint praise. This could be Zombie’s best album since The Sinister Urge, certainly on par with Educated Horses, but as discussed, that’s a low hurdle to clear. Only “Heathen Days” rings with the kind of energy that demands to be listened to again and again. The Great Satan can’t consistently carry the energy and aggressiveness that Rob is, or was, capable of, and while it’s not a terrible record that reminds of Zombie’s halcyon days, it’s also a disappointing one, because it reminds of Zombie’s halcyon days.
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