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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

White Zombie Sticking To Good, Loud Rock

Fred Shuster Los Angeles Daily News

When the colorful hard-rock outfit White Zombie released its second album recently, the group agreed to mark the occasion by dropping by a local record store to greet the fans.

What the band found was a line at Tower Records in Hollywood that extended for several blocks. But what was even more surprising to Rob Zombie, the group’s longhaired lead singer, was the sort of people the event drew.

“There was something like 900 kids there and, I swear, most of them I would never have assumed were into White Zombie,” he said. “A lot of them were just normal, clean-cut kids. So, it’s impossible to tell who buys the records.”

Actually, judging by the charts, practically everybody seems to be buying White Zombie’s current disc, “Astro-Creep: 2000” (Geffen), which celebrates gore movies, trashy culture and fast cars in a stylish semi-industrial-metal setting. The album, the band’s second in three years for the label, debuted in the top 10 immediately following its April 11 release.

“The thing just exploded in the market,” said Gene Sandbloom, assistant program director at the influential Burbank new-rock radio station KROQ-FM. “People have been waiting for it.”

Zombie (born Cummings), whose braided dreadlocks reach down his back, has his own explanation.

“The climate right now just isn’t very friendly toward rock music,” he said. “It’s either slanted heavily toward alternative, or everything is R&B. It seems like every time you turn on MTV, it’s Boyz II Men all day long. I guess good loud rock music is hard to find right now.”

Whatever the reason, “AstroCreep 2000” is at No. 9 in the charts as the band kicks off a national tour today in Phoenix, with a garish new stage show that arrives in Santa Monica at the end of next month.

“There’s really not much money to be made at this point,” Zombie, 30, said. “If you sell a million records, it just means you’ve recouped your cost and made a little money on the side.”

“Everything’s so expensive today,” he added. “Even if you get a gold record, everyone thinks you’re really living high. But sometimes, you haven’t even broken even yet.”

Certainly Zombie is not living high, if his small North Hollywood loft apartment is any indication. It’s crowded with pinball machines, horror film posters, a framed autographed picture of “Bride of Frankenstein” actress Elsa Lanchester and a pair of enormous model robots from Japan that tower over the couch. In one corner, a lifesize “Creature From the Black Lagoon” figure stands, green scaly arms outstretched in classic frightflick pose.

Despite such eerie surroundings and his wild-man stage act, Zombie is soft-spoken and polite, answering questions with the sort of detail rarely offered willingly by rock performers. A cartoon artist and onetime production assistant on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” Zombie drew the comic art on the new album’s extended CD booklet and oversees the band’s merchandising. He also was a first-time director for the band’s current video, “More Human Than Human.”

But right now, Zombie is thinking about the road, where the band must pull in $100,000 a week to keep the current tour rolling, he said.

“It would be great if it was just one person with an acoustic guitar,” he said. “Then, we’d be getting tons of money. But taking this huge circus on the road is expensive.”

This circus is made up of two buses (one for the musicians, one for the crew) and two semitrailers for the stage, sound, lights and other effects.

“It’s got video, explosions, fire,” the chief Zombie said. “The music will totally come alive.”

And the band members’ tour already is being anticipated by their fans. Last Saturday, a couple of local high school girls waited just after dawn at Tower in Sherman Oaks to buy tickets for Zombie’s local dates.

“We like them because their music is really hard,” said Madeline McLaughlin, 16, of Van Nuys. “And they have a girl bass player, which is cool because it shows the guys in the band aren’t intimidated by a female musician.”

Added Erin Boyd, 15, also of Van Nuys, “They’re not too mainstream, either.”

“The audience is kind of a mystery,” Zombie admitted. “When it was on a smaller level, you could literally see the 10 people standing in front of you and you almost knew the entire audience by name.”

The band - Zombie (vocals), Jay Yuenger (guitar), Sean Yseult (bass) and John Tempesta (drums) - got started 10 years ago in New York, part of the same Lower East Side noise-rock scene that spawned the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and others.

“Back then, nobody was doing well,” Zombie said. “A band that brought in 200 people was considered huge.”

The quartet released several small-budget indie albums and singles, but it wasn’t until the video for “Thunder Kiss ‘65” captured the attention of MTV’s “Beavis & Butthead” in 1993 that a large audience came aboard. The show’s goofy cartoon team loved the Zombie video, and almost overnight, millions of teens followed suit.

“For some reason, we got incredibly singled out by that show,” Zombie said. “I don’t think it had anything to do with Beavis and Butthead as cartoon characters, it just had to do with the fact that MTV was playing the videos, in whatever format.”

Actually, what really won fans was White Zombie’s relentless touring schedule. The band remained on the road for 2 years, playing 350 dates worldwide, selling more than 1 million albums and earning a 1993 Grammy nomination in the process.

During that period, White Zombie - which takes its name from a 1932 Bela Lugosi film - opened for all the top metal bands, from Anthrax to Slayer, including two long stints with Pantera thrown in for good measure. By the end of the trek, Zombie had graduated to 5,000-seat venues, as headliners.

“I really like touring because it’s the one thing this business has over anything else,” Zombie said. “With movies, you make them and people sit in the dark somewhere and watch them. It’s only with bands that you can stand in front of the people and everything happens.

“But after 400 shows in a row, you feel like you’re doing a Broadway play. It can definitely hit a burnout factor. But a new album makes it all fresh again.”