Rob
Zombie
Zodiac
Swan Records/T-Boy Productions/UMe
All
Access Rating: A-
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| Rob Zombie - Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor 2013 |
Translated
from some weird lost language that only Rob Zombie understands, “Ging Gang Gong
De Do Gong De Laga Raga” probably has some fiendishly obscene meaning,
especially considering that in the pummeling chaos of the track – off his
latest album, the awesomely titled Venomous
Rat Regeneration Vendor – he’s heard exhorting anyone within earshot to
“rally round the girl with the skull on her ass.” Either that or Zombie has
suddenly begun speaking in tongues.
Another
seething, all-consuming cauldron of mind-bending heavy metal riffage, dizzying
dance beats, industrial brutality, electronic unease and Zombie’s demented
fantasies all mashed together, Venomous
Rat Regeneration Vendor might be his most visceral and entertaining album
to date. Amplified by massive, full-throated production values, it’s an aural carnival of cartoonish
horror and rip-roaring debauchery, with mean, explosive rock ’n’ roll freak shows like “Behold,
the Pretty Filthy Creatures!,” “White Trash Freaks,” “Lucifer Rising” and “Trade in
Your Guns for a Coffin” getting right up in your face and spitting in it. They roar out of the speakers like runaway freight trains. At the controls, Zombie is the mad conductor, but it’s his equally
demented assistant, that clever boy John 5, who churns out riff after heady riff,
each one more insanely dynamic and unexpectedly potent than the last and seemingly
packed with enough dynamite to blow a mile-wide hole in a mountain of rock.
While Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor is capable
of generating awesome power, Zombie and his evil henchmen aren't satisfied with
simply throwing their impressive weight around, even though the stomping opener “Teenage
Nosferatu Pussy” is one of the heaviest tracks ever committed to a Zombie
record. Updating The Doors’ “The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)” for the
new millennium, the swinging “Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown” –
thrown around by swirling organ and crushed under the heel of Five’s grinding guitars
– swaggers like a drunken cad, spilling his drink and eyeing
up easy girls. And then there’s something insidiously infectious sweeping
through “Rock and Roll (in a Black Hole)” like a full-on pandemic, the spare
electronic beats giving way to a raging, head-spinning cyclone of raucous metal
energy.
Again,
Zombie loves to draw the most ludicrously evil images with words, including
this little nugget of wisdom from “White Trash Freaks”: “She’s a Warhol
painting heading west/I love Ringo across her breast/covering a nasty pitbull
scar/life ain’t shit/if you ain’t a star.” And he relishes taking on absurd new
identities, like “dirty pig alley Dan” and “King Kong raisin bran” in “Ging
Gang Gong De Do Gong De Laga Raga.” A literary Salvador Dali, Zombie’s writings
often sound as if they are the product of terrifying acid trips. He does come down
to sleepwalk his way through a rather nondescript and tepid reading of Grand Funk Railroad’s
“We’re an American Band,” but the rest of Venomous
Rat Regeneration Vendor is a delicious descent into madness, a hell ride of
crazed, breathtaking intensity and almost manic mood swings. Buy a ticket to
the show. You won’t ask for a refund. (universalmusicenterprises.com)
– Peter
Lindblad
