80s White Zombie

Just wandering what you all think of pre La Sexorcisto White Zombie. I think their predecessor Make Them Die Slowly was their best and Soulcrusher was a good album as well. Not a fan of the albums before that sounded like Rob Zombie was too obsessed with Nick Cave's old band The Birthday Party

heres another kick ass clip!!

fingers wrote:

Just wandering what you all think of pre La Sexorcisto White Zombie. I think their predecessor Make Them Die Slowly was their best and Soulcrusher was a good album as well. Not a fan of the albums before that sounded like Rob Zombie was too obsessed with Nick Cave's old band The Birthday Party

I think you're just saying this to sound underground cool.

Soul Crusher is terrible. Not to mention it sounds exactly like all the stuff that came before it. And Rob's vocals pre-Make Them Die Slowly, or even on that album, are borderline atrocious. Make Them Die Slowly is decent and I think it could be re-recorded and made into a good album, but the way it's recorded isn't all that hot.

White Zombie got good on the God of Thunder EP, which is largely the result J. Yuenger's songwriting skills and Rob's heavier tone.

Eyesore wrote:

fingers wrote:

Just wandering what you all think of pre La Sexorcisto White Zombie. I think their predecessor Make Them Die Slowly was their best and Soulcrusher was a good album as well. Not a fan of the albums before that sounded like Rob Zombie was too obsessed with Nick Cave's old band The Birthday Party

I think you're just saying this to sound underground cool.

Soul Crusher is terrible. Not to mention it sounds exactly like all the stuff that came before it. And Rob's vocals pre-Make Them Die Slowly, or even on that album, are borderline atrocious. Make Them Die Slowly is decent and I think it could be re-recorded and made into a good album, but the way it's recorded isn't all that hot.

White Zombie got good on the God of Thunder EP, which is largely the result J. Yuenger's songwriting skills and Rob's heavier tone.

There is a slight improvement on Soulcrusher to its predecessors the musicianship has improved such as the riffs still repetitive but not as bad as its predecessors. But yes Rob Zombie sounded like he needed more practice on his vocals and yes if you label it their first album it's their obviously weakest album mostly because they still had long way to go musically.
As with Make Them Die Slowly I totally agree that album should be remastered and by that I mean the same way Ozzy remastered his albums with Randy Rhoads by re-recording the guitar and drum parts. If White Zombie at the time had the money to get a well known professional producer like Rick Rubin or even the producer(s) that produced White Zombie's last album Astro Creep and Rob Zombie's debut album, Make Them Die Slowly would be of been huge.
There's been a rumour that Kurt Cobain was influenced by 80s White Zombie along with Sonic Youth.

When I heard SOUL CRUSHER years ago, I thought it was total garbage to be honest... they could barely play when they made that record.

I saw'em open for Suicidal Tendencies around '90 (which would've been the MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY period I believe) and they were a pretty terrible live band too at that time.

After that experience, I didn't even want to give'em a chance when LA SEXORCISTO came out (my friends were raving to me about this "new" band they'd seen on Headbanger's Ball, and I was like "What, White Zombie? I saw them, they suck!" Hahaha) but that damn "Thunder Kiss 65" track got so much play that it eventually won me over and I bought that album... and I was like "Wow, they must've taken some lessons over the past couple of years"

I have 'Make Them Die Slowly' which I bought after LA SEXORCISTO' , I was very disappointed. Listening to it now I have to agree with Eyesore's assement of this CD, the vocals are horrid and the production is non existent.

manny wrote:

I have 'Make Them Die Slowly' which I bought after LA SEXORCISTO' , I was very disappointed. Listening to it now I have to agree with Eyesore's assement of this CD, the vocals are horrid and the production is non existent.

Guitars are out of tune. Hell, everything is out of tune. But somewhere in there you can hear potential.

You heard the God of Thunder EP? That one is where it all clicked.

There are moments on those early albums that click, but they were one big mess of a band. But popular! Bizarre.

Eyesore wrote:

manny wrote:

I have 'Make Them Die Slowly' which I bought after LA SEXORCISTO' , I was very disappointed. Listening to it now I have to agree with Eyesore's assement of this CD, the vocals are horrid and the production is non existent.

Guitars are out of tune. Hell, everything is out of tune. But somewhere in there you can hear potential.

You heard the God of Thunder EP? That one is where it all clicked.

There are moments on those early albums that click, but they were one big mess of a band. But popular! Bizarre.

Nope never heard that EP and I looked at getting the boxset they released a few years ago, so what is your opinion of the boxset Eyesore?

Eyesore wrote:

manny wrote:

I have 'Make Them Die Slowly' which I bought after LA SEXORCISTO' , I was very disappointed. Listening to it now I have to agree with Eyesore's assement of this CD, the vocals are horrid and the production is non existent.

Guitars are out of tune. Hell, everything is out of tune. But somewhere in there you can hear potential.

You heard the God of Thunder EP? That one is where it all clicked.

There are moments on those early albums that click, but they were one big mess of a band. But popular! Bizarre.

Some bands get away with their guitars and other instruments out of tune. Black Sabbath's Paranoid for instance was slightly out of tune Tony Iommi's tuning is tuned up slightly from the standard tuning gauge (eg the bottom string E sounds like it was almost tuned to F).


I do however agree with you that Make them Die Slowly would of sounded alot better if every instrument was tuned up efficiently .

A pity Rob Zombie will unlikely remaster the album and re-release it.

manny wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

manny wrote:

I have 'Make Them Die Slowly' which I bought after LA SEXORCISTO' , I was very disappointed. Listening to it now I have to agree with Eyesore's assement of this CD, the vocals are horrid and the production is non existent.

Guitars are out of tune. Hell, everything is out of tune. But somewhere in there you can hear potential.

You heard the God of Thunder EP? That one is where it all clicked.

There are moments on those early albums that click, but they were one big mess of a band. But popular! Bizarre.

Nope never heard that EP and I looked at getting the boxset they released a few years ago, so what is your opinion of the boxset Eyesore?

it only has 2 or 3 songs on it you might as well download them or hear them on youtube.

manny wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

manny wrote:

I have 'Make Them Die Slowly' which I bought after LA SEXORCISTO' , I was very disappointed. Listening to it now I have to agree with Eyesore's assement of this CD, the vocals are horrid and the production is non existent.

Guitars are out of tune. Hell, everything is out of tune. But somewhere in there you can hear potential.

You heard the God of Thunder EP? That one is where it all clicked.

There are moments on those early albums that click, but they were one big mess of a band. But popular! Bizarre.

Nope never heard that EP and I looked at getting the boxset they released a few years ago, so what is your opinion of the boxset Eyesore?

Don't have it. From all I've heard, though, the box set is crap. I guess there was no input from other band members besides Rob, there's no liner notes or photos, or least there's very little. There are no bonus tracks, either. It was supposed to be "everything White Zombie ever recorded," but it's missing TONS of songs.

Not sure if it's been remastered. I'd hope so, anyway. I guess it was just a half-assed contract killer/filler. I'll buy it someday, probably, but at a huge discount.

I like later White Zombie a lot more.

The pre-La Sexorcisto stuff was pretty horrible. I couldn't get into any of that.

A buddy of mine made some pretty good coin a couple of years ago selling his original pressings of the SOUL CRUSHER and PSYCHO HEAD BLOWOUT EPs' on eBay... Rob & the band released those records themselves at only 1000 copies a pop. I don't remember exactly how much he got for'em but it was a couple hundred, easy...

the box set is what it is. I got it and i'm happy with it. Everything was remastered so La Sexorsisto sounds really good. Unfortunetly everything before that is still pretty bad haha. If you don't have everything its a good way to go.

Eyesore wrote:

manny wrote:

Eyesore wrote:

manny wrote:

I have 'Make Them Die Slowly' which I bought after LA SEXORCISTO' , I was very disappointed. Listening to it now I have to agree with Eyesore's assement of this CD, the vocals are horrid and the production is non existent.

Guitars are out of tune. Hell, everything is out of tune. But somewhere in there you can hear potential.

You heard the God of Thunder EP? That one is where it all clicked.

There are moments on those early albums that click, but they were one big mess of a band. But popular! Bizarre.

Nope never heard that EP and I looked at getting the boxset they released a few years ago, so what is your opinion of the boxset Eyesore?

Don't have it. From all I've heard, though, the box set is crap. I guess there was no input from other band members besides Rob, there's no liner notes or photos, or least there's very little. There are no bonus tracks, either. It was supposed to be "everything White Zombie ever recorded," but it's missing TONS of songs.

Not sure if it's been remastered. I'd hope so, anyway. I guess it was just a half-assed contract killer/filler. I'll buy it someday, probably, but at a huge discount.

Everything's remastered so it sounds better, but theres a few tracks missing (and a few previously released ones at that). The booklet is terrible, no liner notes, album art, etc. and what IS there is reproduced in some dumbass sepia tone, so it even makes that a moot point.

As far as their early stuff goes, I've always liked Psycho Head Blowout, God Of Thunder, and Make Them Die Slowly. The rest of it is pretty terrible.

I just went back & looked at the track list for the album "Soulcrusher" and notice that it didn't contain that song, which ended up on "La Sexorcisto" - that, along w/ "Black Sunshine" were probably my two favorite White Zombie tracks.

MetalFRO wrote:

I just went back & looked at the track list for the album "Soulcrusher" and notice that it didn't contain that song, which ended up on "La Sexorcisto" - that, along w/ "Black Sunshine" were probably my two favorite White Zombie tracks.

There was no title track on Soul Crusher. The song was only on La Sexorcisto.

Fat Freddy wrote:

When I heard SOUL CRUSHER years ago, I thought it was total garbage to be honest... they could barely play when they made that record.

Wanted to comment on this the other day but forgot haha. Back when I heard Psycho Head Blowout for the first time, I was reading one of the rags who suggested picking up Soul Crusher because it was even better than that EP. I made the mistake of buying it, and that album is one of the biggest pieces of crap I've ever heard. Where it gets all the "best of early WZ" press I'll never understand.

Yeah, that early White Zombie stuff never did much for me either. It just sounds like it's all over the place musically, and the production is muddled, although you can hear the potential as someone mentioned earlier.

Let me clarify. I don't necessarily think you can hear any potential, really; at least not in terms of something that would morph into the version of the band that hit the mainstream scene. I think there are plenty of bits and pieces that are really cool on those old albums, but the same can be said for St. Anger.

Which, considering that album is a festering pile of doodoo, isn't saying much.

Haha, good point.

White Zombie doesn't do much for me period.

Same with Rob's solo stuff.

More power to those who like it though.

Im a fan but not a die hard though im not familiar with old White Zombie, as my first exposure was when Thunderkiss 65 came out that song was AWESOME!!!

Yeah, "Thunderkiss" was good. As was "More Human than Human".

But I just find Rob's career to be full of filler.

He does have a good song here and there though.

But I'm not a fan.