Rob Zombie: The Sinister Urge : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If performers like Britney Spears and Fred Durst are the music-biz equivalent of George Lucas -- dependent on pricey special effects to sell their spectaculars -- Rob Zombie is a modern-day Roger Corman, plowing through low-brow high-concept with a broad wink. The Sinister Urge, like most of Zombie's offerings, borrows heavily from the fringes of trash culture but -- thanks to an art-damaged past -- retools them in bizarro-world fashion. As such, Herschel Gordon Lewis' hickoid horror allegory "Scum of the Earth" forms the basis for a machine-shop apocalypse, while "Never Gonna Stop (The Red Red Kroovy)" almost manages to make pro wrestling relevant again. Showing more willingness to depart from his roar 'n' gore formula, Zombie resurrects the ghosts of glam past (on the Alice Cooper-esque "Dead Girl Superstar") and even nods to the Social Security set by calling in Ozzy Osbourne to duet on "Iron Head." Yeah, it's possible to quibble with the sensitivity level of outbursts like "Bring Her Down (to Crippletown)," but as underbelly dwellers have known for decades, art doesn't have to be in good taste to taste good.

DAVID SPRAGUE
(November 12, 2001)