Album Review: Rob Zombie - Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor

Film director and sometimes musician Rob Zombie is back with his eponymous band for studio album number five. Maybe before heading into the studio for this one, Zombie channelled the spirit of Spike Milligan in a séance, and that's why none of the words on the album's front and back covers make any sense, but if you can look past the title, Zombie more than compensates.

On Venomous Rat..., Zombie is doing some of his all-time stupidest, and best, with numbers like Teenage Nosferatu Pussy and Ging Gang Gong De Do Gong De Laga Raga. This is, after all, the guy whose biggest hits have lyric sheets that read like the maladjusted post-adolescent male's wish list: chicks, headbanging, ultra-violence, cars. No one could ever accuse Rob Zombie of selling out, likewise no one could accuse him of demonstrating an ounce of maturation or artistic development. And on Venomous Rat... his band still sounds like Big Black, if Big Black were made up of the rednecks and jocks that Big Black sung about. But who needs to develop when you can write such brilliant quasi-industrial, quasi-metal ready-made-for-head-banging tracks? Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown captures probably the best spoken word jam since Suicidal Tendencies' Send Me Your Money. Likewise, We're an American Band is a perfect marriage of goth and cock rock. And though sadly Joey Jordison's time behind the Zombie drum kit ended without him ever featuring on a full-length, new conscript and ex-Marilyn Manson skinsman Ginger Fish makes the loss seem negligible.

If you can suspend all good sense, Rob Zombie has once again delivered a triumph.