Jason Savio
Rob Zombie – The Great Satan
Monster man Rob Zombie has returned with his eighth studio album The Great Satan. As you might expect, it’s full of his special brand of horror hijinks. But if you listen more closely, the real monsters aren’t the ones that have tails or ride around on brooms.
A lot of the songs on The Great Satan are fun romps that will likely translate well to the live stage. The slow and dirty funk grind of “Sir Lord Acid Wolfman” about, apparently, a pirate wolfman, comes complete with a “yo-ho,yo-ho,” while in “Punks and Demons” Zombie chants over and over: “Satan! Satan!” These sound tailor-made for revving up a crowd. The exceptionally heavy “The Devilman” and industrial rocker “Tarantula” are also bangers. Still, Zombie—at times—sounds like he may be getting a bit tired five decades into this thing. On “(I’m a) Rock ‘N’ Roller,” he sings, somewhat wearily, “The show must go on and on” and, in “Heathen Days,” he claims, “This life is never ending/ I died a thousand times for you.”
Aside from his own personal dealings, Zombie uses horror imagery to dress his contempt for society, warning us of the hole we’re going down in regard to how we fail to hold this accountable who abuse power, and our dependency and loss of humanity when it comes to technology. Right off the bat he makes this clear with the opening “F.T.W. 84” as an unidentified woman welcomes the listener “on behalf of the government of the United States of America” to “the beginning of the greatest adventure of your life.”
Sprinkled in between the heavy guitar tracks are interesting interludes like “Who Am I?” in which a man says “People have lost themselves” before adding, “They find themselves wondering ‘What am I? Where am I?’ But mainly, ‘Who am I?’” The appropriately titled interlude “Welcome to the Electric Age” continues this with another man saying, “Your life is changing dramatically and you are numb to it.” Zombie then drives this all home in the electric fuzz stomp of “Revolution Motherfuckers” when he yells, “Big brother likes you scared and fat/Hiding in the closet with a baseball bat.”
So sure, you can listen to The Great Satan and take it at surface level for the fun horror that it is, but there’s a feeling that Zombie is making a concerted effort to do more and would probably rather us dig a little deeper to get more out of his words.
For more, visit: www.robzombie.com/