Rob Zombie

As industrial music merged with metal and dance in the late '80s and early '90s, two problems kept it from mass popularity: It took itself far too seriously, and it lacked a front man, a figure with the charisma and vision to serve as its scowling, tattooed public face. Enter Rob Zombie, who with his group White Zombie showed that he'd never heard a Ministry riff he couldn't make groovier, never saw a low-budget horror movie he couldn't produce a big-budget video homage to, and could never be accused of taking himself too seriously.

After finding his musical epiphany with White Zombie's "More Human Than Human," an irresistible chunk of metal-industrial bubblegum that became a huge hit in 1995, Zombie disbanded the group and went solo for Hellbilly Deluxe. Further developing the stylistic elements of White Zombie at their peak -- thunderclap guitars, lyrics like Marvel comics strips on acid, beats that merge the terror of Ministry and KMFDM with the bouncier side of techno -- he bends the music's extremes into a carnival sideshow of pure, loud pop. "Dragula" is The Munsters meets "Dead Man's Curve" -- an ode to a monster roadster that races through every fun monster-movie cliche before pulling over for some good old-fashioned backseat sex: "Dig through the ditches/And burn through the witches/And slam in the back of my Dragula!" Not since Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper had there been a metal god so lovable.

American Music is an insignificant remix disc, and The Sinister Urge stays the course but with fewer killers. The keeper is Past, Present & Future, whose 19 songs from Zombie's solo and group career prove his pop mastery. Every song is a zinger, and the bonus DVD of music videos -- most directed by Zombie -- puts his vision into its proper multimedia context. It's a circus, and Zombie is happy to serve as the ringmaster or -- in the case of "Living Dead Girl," his lovingly thorough rock homage to the classic 1919 silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari -- the mad scientist who does it all just to see a twinkle in his audience's eyes. (BEN SISARIO)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide