White Zombie - It Came From N.Y.C.

Pitchfork 81

“Shut up, Beavis, you’re ruining it.” That’s Butt-Head telling Beavis to stop interrupting White Zombie’s “Thunder Kiss ‘65” video. The cartoon duo treated Rob Zombie and Sean Yseult’s band with deep reverence, and ironically enough, the clip is widely credited as the reason for White Zombie’s initial leap to multi-platinum success. It’s easy to see why the band captured the imaginations of millions of Butt-Heads: Their aesthetic was fully realized—horror and grindhouse-nodding videos and lyrics, Zombie’s booming voice skulking at the front (not to mention his dreads and goggles). It was metal that rode grooves and featured tons of samples. The mid-'90s run of White Zombie that produced their final two albums—their final single, appropriately enough, being their Beavis & Butt-Head Do America soundtrack contribution—was easily the most popular.

But by the time they were playing arenas and getting frequent airplay on TV, they’d been making music for a decade, and their earliest work arguably holds up better than the stuff that made them famous. Yes, it's a total surprise that Numero Group are giving an extremely successful rock band fronted by Rob Zombie the box set treatment—an honor usually reserved for forgotten funk and soul gems. But it also makes total sense. It Came From N.Y.C. unearths records both unreleased and out-of-print while exhaustively telling the band's lesser-known origin story. The box comes with rare photos, archival flyers, a complete archive of their shirts, reproductions of Rob Zombie’s illustrated liner notes, and a detailed account of the band’s history from (full disclosure!) Pitchfork contributor Grayson Haver Currin. Interviews with the band, logged in a beautiful hardcover tome, offer crucial context for this music.

In the beginning, they were a band of art school kids living amid New York City crime and filth. Sean Yseult and Rob Cummings were both attending Parsons in 1984. Yseult switched from ballet to photography after she broke her foot, discovering hardcore and picking up instruments in the process. Cummings moved to New York from small town Massachusetts where he’d been dreaming of the city described by the Ramones and Velvet Underground. The two met in a cafeteria. She had blue-black hair; he wore a Misfits motorcycle jacket. They became a couple and were inseparable for years. They kicked around the idea of starting a band together and ultimately named themselves after a 1932 Bela Lugosi-starring horror film.

What’s quickly apparent from the almost three hours of music on It Came From N.Y.C. is that Cummings and Yseult were the creative and aesthetic anchors behind White Zombie. Guitarists never stuck around long in the band’s early incarnations, which means every one of their first records had an entirely different vibe. Ena Kostabi’s solos on their debut 1985 EP Gods on Voodoo Moon, for example, are a little more flashy than seems sonically appropriate for the band’s ominous, minimal, and occasionally trippy noise-punk underpinnings.

There are great moments on that first 7”—the uneasy melodic sway of “Tales From the Scare Crow Man” and point-perfect opening chug of “Gentleman Junkie”—but the songs themselves show more potential than prowess. Cummings’ growling, raspy screams are perfectly suited to his early horror-aping lyrics, but the frontman billing himself as “Rob Straker” hadn’t found his eventual authoritative Rob Zombie howl. Still, the essentials that would remain throughout the band’s tenure are present on their first recordings: hooks led by Yseult’s bass while Straker shouts nihilistic lyrics about holy mountains, demon clowns, Nazis, butchers, and scarecrows.

The band’s sound was pushed forward on their 1986 “Pig Heaven” single—presented in the box as an EP with four more unearthed tracks from the same session. Their new drummer Ivan de Prume, who would stay with White Zombie throughout the 1980s, emboldened their rhythm section tenfold. They sounded stronger and tighter than ever, and Straker’s psychedelic horror lyrics were becoming narratively connected stories. In their new attempts to make songs trippy or disorienting, they didn’t rely on thin effects pedals—they shoved more details into the margins. (Later in their discography, they proved to be adept with a “more is more” approach.)

The record is bookended by the tinny recording of a ragtime piano—a simple device that both emphasizes their power and shows their interest in painting a more elaborate picture beyond just screams and spilled blood. But while new guitarist Tim Jeffs was an excellent player, his blues-heavy riffs felt out of place in White Zombie. The nearly eight-minute blues groove of “Rain Insane” is one of the most significant departures in the band’s discography, and while it’s definitely an impressive Straker-fronted blues rock jam, White Zombie were much better when they veered toward chaos.

It’s important to note that while White Zombie were making records and playing shows, they were operating in the same New York underground as Swans and Sonic Youth. After they dumped Jeffs, they looked for a guitarist with more specific influences—their ad asked for someone who was into the Butthole Surfers, X, and the Birthday Party. They found Tom Guay, who ran in the same circles as Pussy Galore and was clearly more ready to convey dissonance than prowess. On 1987’s Psycho-Head Blowout EP, Straker was becoming a more confident frontman, Yseult’s low-end was becoming beefier and more authoritative, and on songs like “Gun Crazy,” de Prume would bring rapidfire discord. They were becoming more abrasive and unpredictable, Yseult unafraid to dive headlong into sludge while Guay tried on a variety of anxious, frenetic grooves.

Their next record was written, recorded, and released soon after Psycho-Head Blowout. It was hammered out in a practice space that shared walls with people who screamed in the hallways, jumped out windows, and kept pet raccoons. “It was a fucking nuthouse to say the least,” remembers Straker. Those were the conditions behind their debut album—their most bleak and noise-centric outing yet. With no-wave producer Wharton Tiers (Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca), they made their debut album Soul-Crusher, one of the best of their career.

Early on in White Zombie’s recordings, they tried for intimidation, but could never rise above pastiche. With Soul-Crusher, they create a sound that’s fully unsettling, Straker’s multi-tracked voice becoming a one-man cackling, shrieking chorus. There are several moments throughout where saliva seems to be palpably sticking to his lips, making his uncomfortable lyrics borderline unbearable. Guay, again, is essential. Any impressive on-point solos are buried in the mix beneath Yseult’s massive, overpowering sludge. When he’s prominently featured, he’s playing in the wrong key or doing some incredible work with feedback. Several times, de Prume full-on switches time signatures while the band slip in and out of key. The album features spoken-word samples from old horror movies, but by this point the band was its own B-movie soundtrack.

Despite hitting their target squarely, Straker decided to move on. Guay was fired from the band; Straker started crediting himself as Rob Zombie and became enamored with Metallica’s Ride the Lightning. As a result, White Zombie made the abrupt, full transition to metal on Make Them Die Slowly. Everything about the album is more crisp: The lyrics in the liner notes were no longer hand-scrawled with illustrations littering the margins. Guitarist John Ricci, who could rip through galloping riffs and nail precise high-speed solos, was practically the stylistic opposite of Guay. Producer Bill Laswell placed a huge emphasis on Ricci’s guitar and Zombie’s voice while neutering the rhythm section. Yseult’s bass wasn’t the overpowering beast it was on the previous two records, which means White Zombie were deprived of one of their most crucial ingredients. The drums sounded smaller, thin and hollow. The overall effect is especially draining when taken in the box set’s chronological order: the noise dominance of Soul-Crusher followed by the sluggish, monotonous Make Them Die Slowly.

Once again, White Zombie would ditch their guitarist and move on to the next one. Jay Yuenger is the one that stuck—he stayed with the band until they eventually called it quits. Their final record before signing to the majors and moving out to L.A. was 1989’s God of Thunder. On the cover, Zombie holds the severed head of Gene Simmons. The record opens with their cover of the Destroyer classic “God of Thunder,” and White Zombie introduce their version by jacking Kiss' legendary introduction: “You wanted the best? You got the best! Introducing the hottest band in the world!” Their sense of humor and a slam-dunk performance of a Kiss classic bring some much-needed levity to their aesthetic.

In their final stop before “Thunder Kiss ‘65,” God of Thunder shows the band utilizing samples more successfully than ever. (The best one: Between Zombie verses, a blasé voice chimes in to say, “Listen, you fuckers.”) Yuenger’s style in his White Zombie debut offers the midpoint between Ricci’s and Guay’s—he’s impressive, but not overpowering; heavy, but precise. By God of Thunder, they found footing after some thrilling moments in the underground and a couple of creative missteps. But the missteps come with experimentation, and experimentation is mandatory if you want to escape the 1990s as maximalist weirdo rock stars.

Listening back to White Zombie, it's interesting to consider how their music holds up in 2016. Obviously, they're a crucial part of Rob Zombie's horror legacy, introducing the nihilistic hellscape language he would follow in his solo albums and literal horror films. In an era where Michael Gira is making some of the best records of his life while early works by Sonic Youth and Lydia Lunch are getting reappraised, White Zombie's early presence as a New York underground institution is, on their first 7", intriguing, and on Soul-Crusher, enthralling. Even their later hits, entrenched in 1990s culture as they were (again, thanks in large part to "Beavis & Butt-Head"), stands the test of time thanks to riffs like the slide guitar of “More Human Than Human.” This music pummels, and better still, it escapes the trap of self-seriousness that so many metal and noise bands seem to fall into. They had a sense of humor, which came through in their use of samples and in Zombie's deranged carnival barker performances. But even more engaging than the music's heft, humor, or chaos is the narrative that forms across It Came From N.Y.C.—one of a band that played by their own rules, bucking genre conventions and cutting ties with bandmates in an effort to continuously move forward.