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.