Scum Of The Earth: The Devil Made Me Do It

Former Zombie guitarist staggers in the slipstream

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Rob Zombie’s last two albums weren’t quite as popular as his earlier works and now one of his former guitarists is attempting to reanimate his horror metal legacy through his own band. The Devil Made Me Do It is the third album from Mike Briggs’s Scum Of The Earth project and it’s impossible to listen to without drawing comparisons to the Zombie-meister himself.

From the distorted vocals and crunchy guitars to that unmistakable industrial groove, there are plenty of familiar touches, along with a pinch of Gravity Kills, a hefty dose of Antichrist-era Marilyn Manson and a helping of Frankenstein Drag Queens. Yet for all its attempts to rebuild and revamp the genre, this album doesn’t add anything special to the mix.

The mosh-friendly Via Dela Rosa is basically Demon Speeding Part Two and Zombie Apocalypse could be a demo from White Zombie’s Astrocreep 2000. Despite their best cadavers, Scum Of The Earth struggle to come close to matching horror metal’s bloody fantastic legacy.

Natasha Scharf
Natasha Scharf
Deputy Editor, Prog

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.