Warthur This is one which crept up on me - much like zombies of the classic George Romero variety, come to think of it. I came to White Zombie a bit later than everyone else (Marilyn Manson was my shock rock cup of tea back in the day), and as such a lot of the stuff this album does had become widely imitated by the time I got to it. The liberal sprinkling of creepy sound clips was already a feature of the more danceable end of industrial music, having been pioneered by Skinny Puppy; new guitarist's J's riffs have been imitated by countless groove metal tagalongs ever since, and I've lost count of the number of guys I've run into over the years who thought that growing their hair out and not bathing could make them a Rob Zombie-like cult figure.

Nonetheless, even if the individual parts that make up La Sexorcisto might be cliches by themselves, brought together in one package they come up with a dynamite combination which I found increasingly intoxicating once I gave myself a little time to, well, get into the groove. On my first listen the first few songs seemed like an achingly generic morass, but something clicked partway through Black Sunshine and I loved the rest of the album; I immediately started it over and found that I was catching features of the first few songs which had entirely escaped me the first time.

Like listening to someone who's speaking your native language with a particularly strong dialect or accent, you need to give your ear a little time to adjust to what White Zombie's laying down here, but you'll be glad that you did. Rob's delirious rants and J's volcanic guitar solos are flashy as anything, and the rhythm section of Sean Yseult and Ivan de Prume purr like an engine - it's no wonder that Rob keeps coming back to the car motif in his lyrics.

Special mention, of course, has to be made of the involvement of friend and fan of the band Iggy Pop, without whose support they might have never made it this far. His spoken word introduction on Black Sunshine, in particular, is amazingly evocative and makes me think that someone should get him to narrate a documentary about the Beat writers or something. (You just *know* he'd be up for such a project, after all.)

Unitron La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume 1 is the third studio album from groove/industrial metal band White Zombie.

Switching from the noise metal of the debut and to the doom-thrash of Make Them Die Slowly, White Zombie had began to get in the groove with their 1989 EP God of Thunder. Fast-forward three years later and you get the band's magnum opus, the groove metal classic La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume 1 (Or simply La Sexorcisto, as there never was a volume 2).

There is no album that epitomizes pure punchy groove metal more than La Sexorcisto, it's just non-stop chugging and crunching riffing with the occasional plodding stoner-doom metal dirge as heard in "Warp Asylum" for example. There are also some thrash metal parts, which is only obvious as groove came from thrash, most heard in "Soul Crusher" (Most likely named after the band's debut album). The album is a pure masterpiece in every way, so it's hard to pick highlights. However, I'd say "Welcome to Planet Motherfucker/Psychotic Slag", "Cosmic Monsters Inc.", "Grindhouse", and classics "Thunder Kiss '65" and "Black Sunshine" are my favorites if I had to choose.

La Sexorcisto also really shows the B-grade horror movie lyricism take form in White Zombie's sound, with many samples as well as just zany lyricism. Many times samples can end up sounding misplaced in a non-industrial metal album, but here the samples are used perfectly. There's no shortage of them, but they sound right at home in Rob Zombie's wacky world.

This album is a bonafide classic, and one of my all-time favorites. Apart from Pantera, groove metal hasn't been played as perfectly and memorably as this. If you're a fan of groove metal, and haven't heard this album, do yourself a favor and take a listen to this masterpiece. Hope you found this review helpful, feel free to comment!