Rob Zombie at 50 years old is still kicking and screaming, and most importantly for us fans of his bizarre and gruesome way to see art, is still making good music. Recently he has finished the mixing of his recent , yet-to-be-named, sixth album, a masterpiece that according to Rob Zombie himself is very certain is his “best album yet“.
Since his last studio album, ‘Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor’ was released in the spring of 2013, Rob Zombie has been busy with his multifaceted vision of art, and of course working on his sixth solo album. The recording started during the spring of 2014 and earlier this week Rob Zombie has announced that the mixing was finished with the collaboration of Chriss Harris (aka Zeuss, producer of Hatebreed, All That Remains, Shadows Fall). On his Facebook Page Rob Zombie announced that the recording and mixing were over.
[blockquote cite=”Rob Zombie”]The new studio album is done! The last mixes were put to bed and the studio is back in storage. Can’t give you much info yet… but I can easily say this is my favorite album yet… No joke. Yeah I know every fucking asshole says that. But it is seriously our heaviest most fuck up musical monster to date. One song entitled ‘Well, Everybody’s Fucking In A UFO’ is sure to be an instant Rob Zombie classic! Not since ‘Hellbilly Deluxe’ have I spent this long putting an album together. It was worth it… Our man Zeuss (Chriss Harris) did an awesome job producing and has helped us construct the perfect next step after ‘Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor’. Stay tuned for more details.[/blockquote]
For musicians, especially when they are pressured by the record labels, some albums seemed like the end product is somehow forced. For Rob Zombie, the current state of the recording industry with music being shared at will has freed him to create at his own speed, as he doesn’t have the pressure to make something that sells immediately. On a recent interview given to Jackie Kajzer’s Full Metal Jackie Radio, Rob Zombie gives his thoughts about how his creative process has renewed over the years.
[blockquote cite=”Rib Zombie”]When was the last time you ever interviewed anyone from any band ever and they told you this isn’t their best album? It’s a cliché thing, right? But I really felt with the last album, ‘Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor’, that somehow, you don’t consciously think you’re off the tracks and you’re veering off — you’re just making music and you’re doing your thing. You don’t see your life from the outside point of view that other people will view you in your music. But I felt like with ‘Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor’ that somehow we had gotten back on track; it actually felt that way. Like, ‘Wow! This feels like it did years ago’… There are just certain songs that we just cannot wait to play live that you just know are going to be part of the show. You just have a weird sense of it. Kind of like when we finished ‘Dead City Radio And The New Gods Of Supertown’, and that when we play it in the show it gets as big of a cheer as if we played ‘Dragula’ or some old song. You just have that moment in time where you feel like you’ve hit that same nerve with a song, and this record has a lot of that.[/blockquote]
With the change of how music reaches the fans, the situation creates a unique setup for musicians to get creative in how they want to make their music available to theirs. For some, this may be an obstacle, for Rob Zombie, it’s an opportunity, as he put it in the same interview.
[blockquote cite=”Rob Zombie”]I think, in a funny way, everyone is always complaining about the record business and complaining about illegal downloading. I don’t care about any of that stuff. In fact, in a funny sort of way, the fact that nobody buys records doesn’t bother me. In fact, I feel like it’s freed me… I never did anything to sell records, per se, but when you take that pressure away 100 percent, I swear to God, you get more creative, because it doesn’t matter anymore. That’s really been the case.[/blockquote]
I guess for some, the glass can be really half full. If what Rob Zombie made in ‘Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor’ was him getting back on track with his “groove”, I for one cannot wait to hear what this new album has in store for us fans. Only time will tell.
