Classic Day – Four From Hell

Showcasing a fairly broken home of B-Movie samples and thunderous sound, White Zombie exploded into the mainstream veins with their third record, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One. While every track is incredibly similar in sound, there are moments where the meth heads monsters of cinema and atmosphere can shine through and break new ground.

The opening track, “Welcome To Planet Motherfucker/Psychoholic Slag” breaks through the Earth with a raised skeleton hand in both terror and power. The chilling white bone shakes the dirt off and immediately burns the bridges after a short ominous introduction. Everything here under White Zombie’s belt is an arsenal cranked at full mast from the seductive screams to the rhythmic backbreaker. Consisting of Rob Zombie as the maestro of the chaos, Jay Yuenger joins the guitar as a new recruit that lays these metal tones that perfect nestle under Sean Yseult’s bass performance. With Ivan De Prume on the percussion, this four-piece tightly wraps around a synonymous sound that flashes the images and foundation for a film like House Of 1000 Corpses.

It is chaotic, but somehow reminiscent of the yesteryear’s videos that grew the audience into such horrific loving freaks. With samples that describe, “Get up and kill!” or “Do you have to open graves to find girls to fall in love with?” showcase this deeper fascination with scary movies and music. It is this connection that establishes a fiber wire cable strong enough to hold both the emotions of utter fear and deeper fixation on the style. This at the time, was an approach to sound that was somewhat new for rock music. Sampling had been around for ages previously in other genres but when the record debuted in 1992, the use of prerecorded samples to illustrate these grander settings seemed otherworldly.

This loose but frantic styling paired with heavy riffs and mainstage percussion fills and drum grooves that continue to impress are White Zombie’s bread and butter. They crush on the following track, “Cosmic Monsters Inc.” which is an instrumentalist’s wet dream. With these crashes on the percussion and a real sinister choke on the strings, the track can stand even before the vocal touch the scene. They are Dr. Frankenstein’s house rock band that can really create some catchy songwriting with these instrumentals that work in backwoods hillbilly courtyards.

Frankly, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One is one of the records that always manage to lurk its way back into the mind of the audience. Whether it is from the samples that horror fans love or the villains that they paint themselves as White Zombie is a hypnotic run-in with the inner fears of the dead finally walking the Earth.

Listen To La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One Here!!! – Spotify/Amazon/iTunes