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Six years ago,White Zombie was just another obscure metal band,toiling away in the Netherworld of the Big Apple's underground club scene. Then suddenly,after being signed to Geffen Records 1992 and getting support from those submoronic MTV cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-Head a year later,White Zombie became the coolest metal band in the land. "We had a metal underground scene made up of kids who knew about us for a long time before MTV discovered our video,"said White Zombie leader Rob Zombie during an interview. "Today,after MTV,the fans we see coming out to our shows are such a mix that it gets pretty weird at times being on-stage watching who's out there in the crowd. We don't have a problem with that,we're not into trying to be exclusive about who are audience is. That was never our intention,we just don't care." White Zombie(the group's name is derived from a 1932 Bela Lugosi film),released the macabe,nightmarish,techno-metal monster La Sexorcisto:Devil Music Vol.1, in 1992. The album displayed with an industrial-metal-disco precision,music which brought the listener into Rob Zombie's B-grade movie horror show. Legions of emotionally challenged teens marched to their favorite shopping mall record store and snapped up copies of Zombie's Geffen Records debut album. It didn't take long for the members of White Zombie,J(guitar),Sean Yseult(bass) and drummer John Tempesta,along with Zombie himself, to become the great rags-to-riches story in today's world of heavy metal music. No small feat for a group creating music within a musical genre which has become virtually extinct both on the Billboard album charts as well as at the box office. Yet Rob Zombie credits the years of touring and playing in relative obscurity with laying the group's foundation for later success. "People forget that before MTV,"said Zombie,"bands went out on tour and built a following from the ground up. We toured constantly before MTV ever aired our videos,so people came out to see us time and time again. That's the only way we feel you can make your show concrete. After all,MTV can't do everything for you." The latest White Zombie album "Astro-Creep 2000:Songs of Love,Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electronic Head," has sold 1.3 million copies to date and remained on Billboard's Top 10 for eight consecutive weeks. The current White Zombie tour is a high-tech pyromaniac's fantasy come true, complete with a huge stage production,eerily reminiscent of the 1974 Alice Cooper hockey- barn,theatrical extravaganzas. "Lately we've been offered so many bizarre tours,"said Zombie. "Like opening for Van Halen and stuff like that. I'm like,'What's this all about?' I can just imagine looking out at a sea of 40-year- old guys who worship Eddie Van Halen,all staring at us and saying,'What is this?'. That's why on this tour we're headlining." According to Zombie,one of the artists who has influenced his work comes from a completely different musical genre. "I was on a huge Frank Sinatra kick,"said Zombie,"it lasted for about three years. Then it finally ended because I went to Vegas and saw him. It was at the Desert Inn in Vegas,and he was awesome. He sounded perfect,and he was funny and he just did his stuff. I think they overexaggerate a lot of his problems because it makes for interesting tabloid stories. He's like 80-years-old and he's pretty amazing for a guy at that age. I'll be lucky to get out of a chair when I'm that old."
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