White Zombie- Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Well, let me start off by saying, Ive always liked quite a bit of White Zombie's early material, so I was looking forward to this set alot, but what we were promised sounded awesome, and what we got was well a mountain of smurf poo package wise basically. My first complaint is the damn packaging, box set my ass, what it ends up as is a 5 pack digi case in one of those clear plastic slip covers with the song titles written across the back. You do get some unreleased artwork of his mainly in collage form all over the digi itself, which looks pretty cool, but not all of the original album covers are there, plus what was in color, isnt, I understand and know that alot of the drawings were done in black and white, but whats with this lame ass sepia tone everythings printed in? As for the booklet itself, its done up more or less the same way, just pictures and collages done in the same tone, which still looks pretty cool, but you get NO lyrics, NO comments from band members or anything, just a list at the end where the tracks are from, and bam thats it. LAME. For all the "labor" Rob claims he put into it, it sure looks half assed to me.

As for the tracklisting, we were promised EVERYTHING, unreleased songs and the like, which clearly didnt happen. The first glaring omission, which irritated me the most, mainly because they were on the tape version of the "Gods On Voodoo Moon" EP are "Black Friday" and "Dead Or Alive". Also not included are the cut tracks from "Make Them Die Slowly" due to cost issues, not to mention the single B-Sides from WZ's popular years and various other unreleased tracks from their early years, which are quite readily available in bootleg format. The only actual non album tracks you get are the ones from soundtracks and their cover of "Children Of The Grave" from a Black Sabbath tribute. Once again, LAME, if your going to smurfing promise something, make sure you follow through and put all of it on here.

Well, as for the music itself....GREAT stuff here, an awesome job done of mastering everything and cleaning it up (specifically the older material) some of which is finally completely audible for the first time. Disc One contains the 4-track version of "Gods On Voodoo Moon", the "Pig Heaven" single and the "Psycho Head Blowout EP". For those of you unfamiliar as of yet with WZ at their earliest, its very punky, but leaning more towards the noise rock/heavy rock side. Over all, some nice meaty riffs and bass lines contained within. Rob's voice however, is VERY nasal (imagine that nasally voiced kid from your High School science class trying to cover the Germs or something similar) and lacks much of the power and growls he'd later develop. However, they do manage to establish their own unique sound here, and some quite excellent tracks to boot. The only problem is, WZ doesnt really evolve or change much during their first few EP's and LP's, so alot of the tracks sound very samey and repetitive. They do manage to throw in a few movie samples spread throughout the early stuff though.

Which, has always been one of my main problems the "Soul Chrusher" LP that starts off Disc Two (the other half of the disc is the "Make Them Die Slowly" LP). You DO manage to get a few stand out tracks on it, but most of it just kind of plods along for me. "Make Them Die Slowly" is the first noticeable change in the material, they move away from the "noise rock" sound they started off with towards an almost heavy/thrash type metal tone (although speed wise, it never goes past 2nd gear) and Rob's voice is a deeper version with a more growling type tone (even with the occasional yeah tossed in) that starts to show how he would eventually sound. Easily the best of the early albums. Disc three is really where they start to pick up how they would with "La Sexorcisto". Starting off with the "God Of Thunder" EP, which is just excellent and has an awesome updated version of Disaster Blaster from "Make Them Die Slowly", and fits in great with "La Sexorcisto", sounds like they could be part of the album really. The rest of three is made up of "La Sexorcisto" and "I Am Hell" from the Beavis and Butt-Head experience album, so nothing new there, and Disc Four is just "Astro Creep", the rest of the soundtrack cuts and the Sabbath cover.

The DVD is pretty cool, its made up of all their promo music videos, and some pretty cool live clips from throughout their career. All in all, a good release to get if you have no White Zombie in your collection at all, or want the early stuff in stellar quality. Overall, I have to give it a C rating wise due to content issues.

Standout tracks from their early days:
Gentleman Junkie, King Of Souls, Pig Heaven, Eighty-Eight, Fast Jungle, Gun Crazy, Kick, True Crime, Ratmouth, Shack Of Hate, Die Zombie Die, Truck On Fire, Scumkill, Demonspeed, Disaster Blaster, Murderworld, Acid Flesh, Revenge, Godslayer, God Of Thunder, Love Razor, Disaster Blaster II.