Speaking of zombies ….

Don’t let all the horror movies, the horror album covers, and the horror name fool you. In real life, Rob is a … well, I don’t know if he’s a kitten, but he’s not some freakish, fanged monster, despite those aforementioned album covers.

Rob, by the way, co-founded and fronted the metalicious, gonzo rock band known as White Zombie, before eventually going solo and then turning his attention to film directing. You may know him by his full nom de tomb — Rob Zombie.

As a child, his parents worked at a carnival and his musical obsessions included The Monkees, The Archies, and The Groovy Ghoulies, all of them candy-coated, cartoon kid pop. Of course, he also loved old horror and sci-fi movies. After graduating from high school in Massachusetts, he attended the Parsons School of Design in New York and worked as an assistant on Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Put it all together and you begin to see the strange, disparate threads woven together to make up the long-haired, bearded, tattooed tapestry of the man who eventually assumed the name — Zombie.

Rob and his then-girlfriend, Sean, formed White Zombie as a punky, noise rock outfit in 1985 while at the Parsons School, and for the next few years they self-produced and self-released their own EPs and albums, steadily gaining attention and an audience. By 1992, they were ready to embrace a major label—Geffen, also the home of Nirvana—and a full-metal jacket sound. A musical assault on the masses, the album went multi-platinum.

In 1995, White Zombie released their best-selling—and final—album, Astro-Creep: 2000, which also contained their biggest hit, a hit which marked their only appearance in the US Hot 100.

Sounding like a growly cross between Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson with an electric slide guitar motif to ratchet up the tension, “More Human Than Human” took it’s title from a line in the 1982 sci-fi classic, Blade Runner. It’s the motto of the company producing replicants, artificial humans, indistinguishable from the real deal. The problem, of course, lies herein: if to err is human, then isn’t perfection intrinsically non-human? Hmmm, a paradox that rocks. Not sure that’s what the lyrics are meant to convey, but this song is all about the groove, anyway.

So turn the world around with a skeleton hand …. and White Zombie.