Rob Zombie. What can you say about this guy which hasn’t been said over the past 25 years? The spiritual shock-rock son of Alice Cooper, Godfather of Groove Metal, Horror director extraordinaire. Now on his seventh studio album, the first in five years.
So what’s different? Was it worth the wait? Can a groovy horror metal icon still bring something to the table in 2021? Welcome to Zombie’s new record The Lunar Injection Aid Conspiracy.
One thing you can say is, this guy is truly unpredictable. His past three releases have been fairly sporadic yet at the same time consistent. Being attached to pretty much every horror reboot and remake going probably gets distracting, even if they are just rumours. The latest one is a Netflix exclusive Munsters reboot (which we really want to see – if true) but we aren’t here to talk about Rob’s movies, we’re here to talk of his music. Before we get into it though, how does he come up with those weird titles? Is it like a random generator? Not complaining but it always seems to be a random jumble of words.
When I said unpredictable, I meant his song structures, verging on experimental in style and content – a few samples, sound effects, guitar screeches and distortion are present on pretty much every track. Not much different from his last two releases either but you get what you pay for. This is horror metal, like horror punk where every song has to be about all things spooky – but a bit more … metal!
This is 17 tracks long and, oh boy, does it feel like it. This is no means a casual listen. This wouldn’t feel out of places as a vinyl LP listen. You can tell why the two lead singles (‘The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition)‘ and ‘The Eternal Struggles of the Howling Man’ – try saying that after a few pints) were selected. They are the only tracks that you can get away with promoting this album on the radio. This is far from the mainstream ‘butt rock’ album as you can get, so there’s a positive.
Also, most of these tracks are bizarrely short, maybe taking a leaf out of The Ramones book of songwriting with that, though some end before they even start. In many ways, this makes the songs even more forgetful than they already are.
In all, this just feels like a compilation of b-sides or album tracks in a box set. No offence to Mr. Zombie, but seems very lo-fi.
