Powerman 5000: Anyone For Doomsday? : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

It's nice for Rob Zombie that his kid brother Spider One has franchised Zombie's noise, bad attitude and haunted-house haberdashery: It makes his own McMinistry seem original. Powerman 5000 have walked in Rob's shadow on two major-label albums, and this third one stays timidly close to home. Doing without the hooks that put '99's Tonight the Stars Revolt! on MTV, Anyone for Doomsday? grimly goes through the industrial-metal motions, churning out reanimated riffs, ghoulish groans and lame living-dead lyrics as if five sets of mortgage and alimony payments depended on it. You've heard this danceable din done with much more thought, feeling and craft on Marilyn Manson and even Orgy albums. Padded with between-song interludes and blank space at the disc's end, Anyone? still sputters for less than thirty-four minutes, yet retails for $18.97. Drugs are cheaper and last longer.

BARRY WALTERS
(RS 877 - September 13, 2001)