Rob Zombie sure knows how to make an entrance. With Halloween just around the corner, what better time for everyone’s favourite grindhouse Hellbilly to lurch back into the fray with a single that stomps all over 99% of the music released in 2020? Fair to say we’ve needed this…
Zombie’s first new music in five years, The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition) is the first taster of the The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy, his seventh studio album, which will be released via Nuclear Blast on March 12, 2021.
It’s quite a trip, as you might deduce from the opening lyrics:
“King freak gathering the brains of hyenas
King freak drinking blood in the arena
King freak taste the vectors of disease
King freak destroy you while you’re on your knees
We ain’t your execution
We ain’t your head pollution
We ain’t your flock of sheep
We ain’t your minds to read”
Introduced with a snatch of horror movie dialogue – “The Demons hate you!”, …King Freak takes an unexpected detour into Bollywood beats before the year’s chunkiest riffs kick in HARD. By the sounds of it, this King Freak fella is a thoroughly unpleasant chap, last seen “crawling from the mouth of hell.” There’s sampled talk of “Devil worship! Witchcraft!”, another thrillingly off-piste joyride into funk, jazz and hip-hop, a Zakk Wylde-style burst of monolithic riffage and pinch harmonics from guitarist John 5, the ominous wailing of sirens, and then a closing coda with Mr Zombie spitting, “And the crows will dig your grave. I do not forgive, I do not save.” And then there’s another dash of Beastie Boys-style wibbly-wobbly funk to close, just because they can.
Bravo.
Zombie is releasing a seven inch vinyl single featuring The Triumph Of King Freak… and B-side, The Serenity of Witches. Order the new single from his website.
The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy track list
1. Expanding the Head of Zed
2. The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition)
3. The Ballad of Sleazy Rider
4. Hovering Over the Dull Earth
5. Shadow of the Cemetery Man
6. A Brief Static Hum and Then the Radio Blared
7. 18th Century Cannibals, Excitable Morlocks and a One-Way Ticket On the Ghost Train
8. The Eternal Struggles of the Howling Man
9. The Much Talked of Metamorphosis
10. The Satanic Rites of Blacula
11. Shower of Stones
12. Shake Your Ass-Smoke Your Grass
13. Boom-Boom-Boom
14. What You Gonna Do with That Gun Mama
15. Get Loose
16. The Serenity of Witches
17. Crow Killer Blues
