The Definitive 1000 Songs Of All Time 1955 to 2005: Number 681

Number 681

White Zombie

"More Human Than Human"

(1995)

Genre:Hard Rock

For metalheads who thought bands like W.A.S.P. and Mötley Crüe just weren't menacing or heavy enough, White Zombie was the perfect antidote for a period of time during the mid- to late '90s, as they fused B-horror movie visuals and subject matter with heavy music and growled vocals. And while White Zombie was originally thought to be a full-fledged band, it would later become known that the group was almost entirely the vision of their larger-than-life singer, Rob Zombie. Hence, the White Zombie story begins with good ol' Rob (who was then known as Rob Cummings), shortly after he relocated from his hometown of Haverhill MA, to New York City during the early '80s. Although he had long admired such theatrical metallists as Kiss and Alice Cooper (as well as such punk outfits as the Ramones), Rob wasn't quick to form a group in the Big Apple; instead he worked as a production assistant on the TV show Pee Wee's Playhouse and did art design for magazines.

grrrrr
By 1985 however, Rob opted to pursue a career in music and united with then-girlfriend/bassist Sean Yseult and formed White Zombie (titled after the 1932 Bela Lugosi flick). First considered a New York Underground band rather than a heavy metal band (as proven by such early admirers as Thurston Moore and Kurt Cobain), the group issued several indie releases -- 1985's Gods of Voodoo Moon, 1986's Pig Heaven and Psycho-Head Blowout, 1987's Soul Crusher, plus 1989's Make Them Die Slowly -- even though guitarists and drummers came and went on a steady basis (a few skinsmen who occupied the slot over the years have included Ivan DePrume and John Tempesta, among others).

my head is warm

White Zombie finally found a permanent guitarist in ex-Rights of the Accused member J. (real name -- Jay Noel Yuenger), whose metallic riffs helped toughen up the band's sound even further -- inching them closer to a heavy metal band more than ever before (as evidenced by the first release with J., an EP that featured a cover of Kiss' "God of Thunder"). It was also around this time that White Zombie began incorporating industrial rock elements into their sound, which made them one of the few hard rock bands of the era that you could also dance to. Sensing that the group was about to rocket straight out of the underground scene, Geffen Records signed White Zombie and issued their major label debut, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1, in early 1992.

Scary me? no

Although the world was going gaga over the sound of Seattle rock at the time, hard touring and support of their trashy video for "Thunder Kiss '65" from MTV (via the animated comedy show Beavis and Butthead) made the album a late-blooming success, as it hit the Top 30 a year after its release. It took the group an extended period to work up a worthy follow-up to La Sexorcisto, which eventually arrived in 1995: Astro-Creep: 2000 -- Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head. Spawning another big rock radio/MTV favorite with "More Human Than Human," Astro-Creep: 2000 became White Zombie's all-time highest charting album, peaking at number six on the U.S. Billboard charts. But the album's success couldn't hide the fact that Rob Zombie was getting fed up with the group and longed to launch a solo career of his own. So after the album's supporting tour wrapped up and a remix album was issued, 1996's Supersexy Swingin' Sounds, White Zombie split up.

Subsequently, Rob Zombie has gone on to issue such hit solo albums as 1998's Hellbilly Deluxe, 1999's American Made Music to Strip By, and 2001's The Sinister Urge (and even wrote and directed his own horror movie, House of 1000 Corpses), while Sean Yseult formed the campy surf rock trio Famous Monsters, which released 1998's In the Night!!! and 1999's Around the World in 80 Bikinis. ~ [Greg Prato]

For Wasp see Number 967

For Motley Crue see Number 708

For Kiss see Number 733

What doesa Rolling Stone think about White Zombie
My First Album
Rob Zombie on Alice Cooper's The Alice Cooper Show
"I still have the cover. It's hanging on the wall. Twenty years later, I got Alice to sign it. But it's like him being cradled in the arms of a giant Cyclops, his head in a guillotine, him holding a giant toothbrush, and he's dressed as a gangster with a machine gun. What fucking fifth grader wouldn't spend every cent he owned to get his hands on that?"

Crowbarreds choice for Website to find more on White Zombie ... Click on the address http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Frontrow/4193/zombie.html

Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs ranked this song at Number (Safer if we at Rolling Stone say nothing) and the album ranked at (He eats Bat heads too? Oh Gawd)

This song has a crowbarred rating of 69.3 out of 108