Warthur Oh, sure, a different album in Rob Zombie's discography happens to bear the name "Hellbilly Deluxe 2" - but set that aside, this is basically Hellbilly Deluxe 2: Industrial Rock Boogaloo. Having established a pretty fun songwriting formula on Hellbilly Deluxe, driven it into the ground during the production of that album, and then thoroughly beaten the dead horse via the remix release American Made Music To Strip By, Rob Zombie was finally faced with the task of cooking up some new solo material, having apparently decided that he needed to grow his repertoire beyond Hellbilly Deluxe's selection and old White Zombie favourites.

Joke's on Rob - to a large extent, Hellbilly Deluxe's best songs and the White Zombie back catalogue are more or less what people are interested in, and musically speaking seem to be all Rob has to offer anyway. That, at least, is the impression one gets from The Sinister Urge (named after an Ed Wood movie lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000, because Rob Zombie is the industrial rock guy who loved movies so much he ended up having a better career as a director than as a musician).

Remember all the songs you really liked from Hellbilly Deluxe? They aren't here. But there is a crop of songs which follow the formula of those old classics closely enough that the only real emotional or aesthetic effect the album accomplishes is to make the listener think "wow... I really wish I was listening to Hellbilly Deluxe right now". And then, because there's almost zero chance you bought this one if you didn't already own Hellbilly Deluxe, you turn The Sinister Urge off and go listen to Hellbilly Deluxe. That album, after all, is the full-bore full-fat full-sugar Rob Zombie solo experience; this one just seems a little watered down for radio airplay in comparison (and given how carefully crafted for radio airplay the previous album was, that's saying a lot).