THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 31, 1995 TAG: 9505310027
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUE SMALLWOOD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
WHAT DO YOU do when your offbeat metal band, which has toiled for years in relative obscurity, is suddenly vaulted to platinum sales success - thanks largely to a pair of cartoon pubescents named Beavis and Butt-head?
If you're White Zombie, you thank your lucky stars. Then don't look back.
``We're fine with it, we like the show,'' White Zombie guitarist J. - no last name, please - said recently of MTV's animated arbiters of teenaged musical tastes. A couple years back, the pair pronounced White Zombie's ``Thunder Kiss '65,'' from the ``La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. One'' LP, cool. And young America bought it.
``Before Beavis and Butt-head ever put us on their show, though, we'd sold a quarter of a million records and were doing really well by ourselves,'' J. continued. ``Beavis and Butt-head is what kicked it over into the psycho, million-selling thing. But Beavis and Butt-head helped heavy music in general, they helped Danzig, Biohazard. All these bands had all this increased visibility. It was the first time any of those bands were on MTV during the day. It's just basically a really good thing for music.''
After touring literally non-stop for two years behind ``La Sexorcisto,'' and collecting a Grammy nomination for ``Best Hard Rock Performance'' to boot, White Zombie took a break to record a follow-up.
The result, ``Astro-Creep: 2000, Songs Of Love, Destruction And Other Synthetic Delusions Of The Electric Head'' does not disappoint; like ``Sexorcisto,'' it's hard, heavy and - if the album's title is any indication - just a little bent. So did the band feel any pressure to come up with another ``Sexorcisto''? Not really, says J.
``We kind of came in (to Zombie record label Geffen) and said we won't sign unless we can do everything ourselves, which is what we're used to doing.''
Rob (Zombie), the foursome's garble-throated frontman, ``does the artwork, we record without any input from anybody. We just wanted to do something better.''
``Astro-Creep,'' produced by seasoned metal producer Terry Date (Prong, Pantera, Soundgarden), packs a denser, more intense sonic wallop than ``Sexorcisto.'' The signature Zombie sledgehammer guitar groove is buttressed by all manner of dialogue snippets, B-movie samples and curious sounds.
``There's more industrial sounds in this, one obvious reason being that we got the keyboard player from Nine Inch Nails (Charlie Clouser) to work with us. He did a lot of the samples with Rob and set up a lot of (tape) loops, which is something we've never really experimented with before.''
White Zombie's unshakeable metal-meets-the-machinery sound and kitschy horror-flick aesthetics endear the band to a strange and vast spectrum of music fans, says J., from arty electro-wonks to hairwhipping headbangers.
``These shows are really funny because you look at the front row of any given show and there'll be a kid with black dreadlocks, no eyebrows and a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt sitting right next to a guy in a Winger T-shirt with a big mustache, who's sitting next to a little bald skate kid. It's like a cross-genre hell. It's really cool.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
GEFFEN
White Zombie's unshakeable metal-meets-the-machinery sound and
kitschy horror-flick aesthetics delight fans.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY ROCK MUSIC by CNB