Jason Savio

Oh, Rob Zombie. Look at what you’ve done now. Did you think about what you were going to do before you did it, or did you just spit it out in the spur of the moment?

That’s probably what I would ask Mr. Zombie if I saw him in person to talk about his new album, The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy. But honestly? No. I’d be sucking up to him and asking for his autograph. And that’s the weird thing (or one of many) about Rob Zombie and his music: you love it even when you know you probably shouldn’t. 

Lunar Injection (let’s keep it short) and its absurdly long song titles are just as bloated as many of the songs on it. Zombie not only throws in the kitchen sink; he adds the pots and pans for good measure. But what you’re left with feels somehow less, almost like biting into a jelly filled donut that doesn’t have any jelly in it. For all of the long song titles and lengthy 17-track playlist (almost every other song is a short instrumental), Lunar Injection goes by quite fast, making one feel as though they’ve been tricked by a carnival worker into thinking they were going to end up with some great prize, only to end up with sticker instead (Rob Zombie stickers are in fact included in the boxed version of the CD). 

Of course, this isn’t to say there aren’t any good songs on Lunar Injection (sign right here, please, Mr. Zombie). Rob Zombie has always had a knack for concocting wild and dark imagery that is plenty fun and dirty, and he continues his streak here. “My name is sleazy rider, man/High above the earth in a garbage can/My name is sleazy rider, man/ An outer space (expletive) boogie man,” he sings in “The Ballad of Sleazy Rider,” a tune in which you can almost see the grime coming out from your speakers when you listen to it. “The Eternal Struggles of the Howling Man” breaks down into  ‘70s porn funk before Zombie shouts repeatedly at the end, “Knievel kicked it, now he’s dead!” 

If all of this sounds tasteless, it’s because it is (looking at you “Shake Your Ass-Smoke Your Grass”). But it’s all in good fun, right? Still, it feels like by the time you’re done listening to Lunar Injection that something is somehow missing. Catchy single? Check: “The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition).” The dark and menacing Rob Zombie of old? Check and check: “Boom-Boom-Boom” and “Crow Killer Blues.” 

Perhaps the best way to understand this Rob Zombie mystery is to listen to “18th Century Cannibals, Morlocks and a One-way Ticket on the Ghost Train.” In it, Zombie shows more of his increasingly prevalent down-home and country swamp side, with an unsuspecting bluegrass guitar line that you’d expect to hear coming from an old pickup truck. The song then blasts into a pummeling static wall of electric guitar and yelling before eventually going back and forth between the two. It’s probably the most honest song on Lunar Injection: a look inside the mind of an artist who is conflicted to keep making the same songs over and over despite wanting the freedom to venture out into something new. The result leaves us–the fans—with a collection of songs that feel more like work than inspired. Lunar Injection just comes off like more of the same, and because of that, it’s lacking. 

For more, visit: Robzombie.com.