Review Summary: Groove metal that actually grooves
If I may put forth one of my personal sub-genre naming gripes, groove metal has always felt like a misleading name for the style. Mostly on the basis of so little of the actual music having any sort of groove to it. Sure, a band like Pantera can add a certain sense of swing to their riffs but most are too busy slowing down thrash or shredding up hardcore that they forget to make metal that you can shake your ass to. Fortunately an album like 1992’s La Sexorcisto Volume 1: Devil Music has been here to serve as one of the rare exceptions to that rule.
Even with this being the album that officially broke White Zombie into the mainstream rock world, the sound combination was unlike anything else out there. The guitar and bass tones cross Metallica and Pantera’s dryness with riff construction and more prominent B-movie samples that tap into their psychedelic roots. One can’t also deny the drums are in a tight enough pocket to get that danceable funk appeal while an injection of hip hop charisma results in Rob Zombie completely giving into character as a hype man excitedly yammering about his favorite horror flicks. The blend has as much to do with Monster Magnet and Clutch as it does Ministry, making me wonder if the band has had a secret seat at the stoner rock table all this time…
At the risk of sounding reductive, it sounds like the band finally stopped trying so hard to be ‘artsy’ and started to give a *** about writing songs that people would actually remember. In addition to playing more intricate than anything from their eighties era, the structures are rigidly constructed. The grooves also drop their angular tendencies and the drums aim for less oppressive endurance tests, resulting in more instrumentally driven textures with room to breathe amidst the persistent thrusting. It also helps that the vocals finally sound engaged with what is actually happening around them, adopting the sort of rhythmic wordplay that brings the kitsch aesthetic to life while staying burly enough to hang with the tough metalheads.
And I sure can’t argue with the songwriting serving up quality between the hit singles and the deep cuts. “Thunder Kiss ‘65” really does feel like lightning in a bottle with a perfect combo of vocal flow and guitar syncopation topped by an explosive chorus and climbing wah effects. “Black Sunshine” admittedly doesn’t hit me as hard in comparison but having Iggy Pop narrating above that driving beat feels like a full circle moment. The jump from a thrashy buildup to mid-tempo verses on “Soul-Crusher” plays like a better realized execution of their eighties style blend and “Spiderbaby (Yeah-Yeah-Yeah)” brings in a more sinister flair. “I Am Legend” and the closing “Warp Asylum” come the closest to doom territory with their slower riff sets and spacey atmospheric touches.
No matter how you approach it, there’s a real idiosyncratic appeal to La Sexorcisto. Those at the time who assumed this was White Zombie’s debut album were no doubt blindsided by how much it differed from the rest of the groove metal zeitgeist, and the rare few who’d known about the band before they went mainstream had to be impressed with how well the broadened scope and hookier songs were executed. There are admittedly sequences that could’ve been trimmed and the production can still be a little too dry for my tastes in spots, but the flow is always infectious. Whether you dance to it, *** to it, and just bob your head in between, this is the sort of stuff designed to get you moving.
