White Zombie Laid To Rest On Boxed Set

WHITE ZOMBIE LAID TO REST ON BOXED SET:

December 18, 2008

Assembling the White Zombie boxed set “Let Sleeping Corpses Lie” was “weird” and somewhat bittersweet for Rob Zombie.

“The funny thing was when I was putting it together, it seemed so long ago,” Zombie told Billboard.com. “It felt like I was putting together a box set of someone else’s band. It just seemed like forever ago, and some of the early songs are, like, 20 years ago or something. It just seemed weird.”

Zombie said that compiling four-CD, one-DVD collection, which includes 63 tracks and a wealth of rare video footage and other memorabilia he’s held onto, “brought up a lot of things I’d forgotten about — unfortunately, some of it was negative.” He was particularly reminded of the waning days of the band, when the group members would tour in separate vehicles and not see each other except at shows. None of the other band members were involved in the set.

“The main reason White Zombie ended was the people who were White Zombie didn’t get along anymore,” said Zombie, adding that he finished the group’s final show in 1996, walked off stage, into a car, went to the airport and “didn’t look back.

“That band had a lot of growing pains and a lot of baggage all the way through. I think we did a lot of good stuff and we were ahead of the curve in the beginning and did some groundbreaking stuff. But it was a painful situation most of the time, actually.”

Nevertheless, Zombie hopes “Let Sleeping Corpses Lie” — pointedly titled, he acknowledged, for those who might wonder about a White Zombie reunion — will feed the appetites of younger generations of fans that continue to come along.

“I can see it, strangely enough, in the royalty checks. Every year the band makes more money,” Zombie said. “Hot Topic is doing a new line of White Zombie merch. It’s just one of those things that happens, I think. There’s always a new wave of kids that gets super-jazzed on a band that’s not around anymore.”

Zombie, meanwhile, is working on his next studio album, which he predicts will be finished by Christmas and out in 2009. The sessons did yield the new songs “War Zone,” which is featured in the soundtrack to “The Punisher: War Zone.”

Zombie also just finished the animated film “The Haunted World of El Superbeasto” and hopes to get cracking on his fourth feature film, “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” in the new year.

Courtesy of www.billboard.com