Exploding with lurid technicolour noise and flooding your brain with nightmarish, acid-fuelled cartoon imagery, musician/director/writer/artist/sideshow freak Rob Zombie is back with his latest exercise in restraint and understatement, The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy (Nuclear Blast).
Another wildly schizophrenic collection of impractically long song titles and enigmatically incomprehensible lyrics, his seventh solo album since leaving alt-metal legends White Zombie back in 1998 is another deranged and hallucinatory, psychedelic locomotive ride deep into the swirling, gaudily tinted heart of Deliriumsville.
Sample-driven intro ‘Expanding the Head of Zed’ features scientific explanations for insanity backed by a pulsing rhythm and creepy choral vocals before the album kicks off properly with the grinding metal throb meets acid funk of ‘The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition)’. Opening with a sample about taking acid, ‘The Ballad of Sleazy Rider’ is a bluesy crawl featuring the classic chorus of, “My name is Sleazy Rider, man. The outer space motherfuckin’ boogeyman!”
‘Hovering Over the Dull Earth’ is a typically odd Zombie interlude which acts as a segue into the uptempo boogie rock of ‘Shadow of the Cemetery Man’. Another brief interlude, ‘A Brief Static Hum and Then the Radio Blared’ leads into the amazingly titled and completely mental ’18th Century Cannibals, Excitable Morlocks and a One-Way Ticket on the Ghost Train’, a country song with dirty vocals, frivolous guitar licks, computer blips, a harmonica and the odd burst of raging metal fury just to keep you nice and unsettled.
‘The Eternal Struggles of the Howling Man’ is classic Rob Zombie riffery meets lounge act funk and science fiction weirdness while ‘The Much Talked Of Metamorphosis’ is the complete opposite. A darkly gentle acoustic piece performed by the criminally underrated John 5, by all rights it should sound hopelessly out of place on a record like this, yet feels perfectly at home. ‘The Satanic Rites of Blacula’ is an irresistible romp bolstered by a sixties style riff and a handclap section. ‘Shower of Stones’ is another short but suitably off-kilter break in proceedings before the trashy party drawl of ‘Shake Your Ass – Smoke Your Grass’ takes over, followed by the John Carpenter style menace of ‘Boom-Boom-Boom’.
The freaky ‘What You Gonna Do with That Gun Mama?’ leads into the scattershot madness of ‘Get Loose’, and with smooth interlude ‘The Serenity of Witches’ being followed by the sinister funk (how is that even a thing?) of album closer ‘Crow Killer Blues’, another journey into unrelenting absurdity is at an end.
As eclectic and demented as ever, TLIKAEC is a riot of dark, twisted fun and is a far more cohesive record than it really has any right to be. Much of this can be attributed to the fact that, as much as his name might be splattered across the cover, it sounds much more like the work of a complete band rather than just a Rob Zombie project. Guitarist John 5 stands out for high praise in particular. From economical, bruising riffs to fun rock’n’roll and country music licks, dark acoustic arpeggios and funky progressions, the six-stringer really comes into his own on this record. The same can be said for drummer Ginger Fish and bass player Piggy D whose partnership has quickly mutated into one of the most formidable rhythm sections around at the moment.
Buy the album here: https://robzombie.com/lunar-injection
8/10
GARY ALCOCK