Under The Influence

A human rights violation was committed right under my nose a few months ago. I was lying back in that supine position favored by pipe-cleaners but not by human spines when the music video that came up on telly was “Sick Bubblegum” by swamp metal master Rob Zombie. Delighted, I moved a few vertebrae up to catch the band ramming it away inside a plush crowded room with Master Rob holding a mike the way one strangulates a corpse just in case”¦ All was going fornicatingly well until 30 seconds into the song the chorus came. My jaw dropped when Master Rob growled out the words, “Rrrock”¦Rrrock”¦ Rrrock”¦ yeah!” I sprang out of bed, located former attorney general Soli Sorabjee’s number on my mobile and was about to call him at 2 o’clock at night when wiser counsel prevented me from immediately asking Soli to defend my case in court. The music video on television had simply knocked out four syllables from the chorus that should have gone, “Rrrock muthafukkah, Rrrock muthafukkah, Rrrock muthafukkah, yeah!”. A grand fantasy had been left crumpled by convent-educated parents of convent-educated yokels!

 

It’s another matter whether Soli ”“ a jazzman himself ”“ would have argued till the werewolves came home in defence of what is Rob Zombie’s magnificent fourth album, Hellbilly Deluxe 2 ”“ full title being Hellbilly Deluxe 2: Noble Jackals, Penny Dreadfuls and the Systematic Dehumanization of Cool ”“ and against the mutilation of one of its key tracks. Rob Zombie is a personal hero of mine. Both as the frontman of White Zombie and from 1998 onwards as a solo demon artist, Master Rob, more than anyone else I know, captures, energizes and then makes the core of heavy metal ”“ fantastical fantasy, rather than artists’ emotions at the forefront — erupt with with fierce theatrics and, lest we forget, sex hormones.

Since the sonic gnash-and-scatter mayhem of White Zombie’s 1987 debut Soul Crusher, right through Rob Zombie’s 1998 Hellbilly Deluxe ”“ full title being Hellbilly Deluxe: 13 Tales Of Cadaverous Cavorting Inside The Spookshow International ”“ and its ”˜sequel’, the aforementioned Hellbilly Delixe 2 of 2010, Master Rob has kept the aesthetics of grindhouse and B horror movies in his rock’n’bull alive and kicking. With the April release of Zombie’s latest album Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor, it’s as clear as an orgy is not a choir that there has been no slacking in the sinews. The first track, “Teenage Nosferatu Pussy,” holds no prisoners as it opens with a crashing Sepultra-style intro only to morph into a skull stomp. We are in 19^th century French Symbolist poetry territory when Zombie slow-tears the words out, “I am the sickness/ I am the quickness/ I am a virgin dying in the spring.” That could be Baudelaire on the line. 

Another infused-with-hot-juices track is the blitzkrieg of “Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown.” There’s an 80s air guitar band trapped inside those frantic chomps. Zombie puts Grand Funk Railroad’s 1973 ”˜We Are An American Band’ through the Grand Guignol sausage machine and out comes a faux-menacing, truly-ironic thunder crack.

Tracks like “Lucifer Rising,” “White Trash Freaks” and “Behold, the Pretty Filthy Things!” on Master Rob’s latest menu may not plunge to the sheer burlesque depths of “Living Dead Girl,” “Dragula,” “What?” – with its immortal lines “Vampire Lovers in a wild bikini/ say uh-huh, uh-uh,uh-huh/ Cannibal man and a jungle girl/ say uh-huh,uh-huh,uh-huh” and “Sickbubblegum”. But Zombie continues to outrock and outhump the big guys of heavy metal with his hormonal sound-scenes. Master Rob’s is a veritable swamp in which everything moist as well as hard finds joyous, heavenly, childish, (only just) forbidden pleasures.

Indi Hazra is a novelist and journalist. He lives in New Delhi. He does not get jazz. 

This article appeared in the June 2013 edition of Rolling Stone India