Soul-Crusher

Though it was actually recorded six months before the Psycho-Head Blow-Out EP, it was on this LP that White Zombie took a lurching step from their noise-rock beginnings toward the sample-heavy groove metal that would make them stars. Snippets from Night Of The Living Dead pop up here and there, and engineer Wharton Tiers gives the music a density and heaviness that at its best (“Drowning the Colossus”) almost prefigures the sludgy doom of Eyehategod. Vocalist Rob Zombie, still sneering more than he roared, and bassist Sean Yseult were the band’s creative directors, but without guitarist Tom Guay and drummer Ivan De Prume, these ten tracks would be aimless collages of riffs, not the pounding noise-metal songs they are.