Opinion appears to have been sharply divided on this band ever since they first appeared on compilations well over a year ago. Many (including me) love the whole tongue-in-cheek aspect of the project, the fact that nothing strays outside the Zombie theme, and surprisingly, perhaps, that it does more than just straight EBM. Others can’t stand the whole idea, pretty much for the same reasons!
Zombie Girl
Blood, Brains & Rock’n’Roll
Label: Alfa-Matrix
Catalog#: AM-1087CD
Buy from: Music Non Stop
Listen on: Spotify
7/10
So how do they stand up with a whole album? Despite my initial fears that a whole fourteen-track album might be a step too far, it works well. The opening title track has classically spooky synths underpinning what is otherwise a straight EBM track, while Jesus Was A Zombie takes a slightly silly idea (he was resurrected, obviously he was a zombie!) and melds it with a variation of We Are The Ones from the last EP. Creature of Night is the first track which perhaps doesn’t work quite so well. A ballad, about the perils of being a zombie! The lyrics are great, the delivery not quite as good…
Living Dead Superstars is another dancefloor aimed track, which again misses the mark a tiny bit. More in stepping over the line of being a bit too cheesy. It does have a fantastic chorus, though…The best dancefloor track here is Go Zombie, though, whose lyrics consist of just two repeated refrains, concentrating on making a dancefloor track so infectious it would not surprise me in the slightest seeing the dead dance to it. As proof of it’s quality, we have been seeing it played since it was a promo track prior to the album release proper, and it was filling the floor then without many knowing what it was. Heaven knows what will happen once everyone has heard it…
The only track to make it onto the album from the Back From The Dead EP is Creepy Crawler, in a much-edited and amended version that has rather more bite for being a bit shorter, but is still a great, catchy (future)pop song. Following track Dance of the Headless Corpse is a rather wonderful carnival-like waltz, but still with an omnious, b-movie horror theme.
The second half of the album gets underway with the guitar-led stomp of The Darkness, coming across as a (monster)mash of Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson – and that is meant as high praise. Another sure-fire dancefloor filler, it could also be just the track to cross them over to a wider audience than the EBM/Goth crowd, too…
Today is kinda a ZG manifesto of sorts, and lurches along well, but Gonna Getcha is better, and sillier. More of a rock’n’roll based electronic track, that swings (no, really), it’s another infectious track that gets into your head and takes root. Funeral Pyre is another ballad, that sounds rather serious, and again doesn’t work all that well – they do far better with the tempo being higher.
What is really the closing track is Prey, which takes a sidestep into electroclash while keeping vaguely with the overriding theme, and shows that there is more to this act than just kitsch-zombie-fun. There are two more tracks – a cover of Implant‘s Fading Away, which like the original is not an awful lot to write home about, while the hidden track is just a collection of horror film samples with some odd effects…
The question now is what exactly ZG do from here. I’m not quite sure if this whole Zombie-thing could be extended over another album without the whole idea wearing thin, but then, I have been wrong before. Taken on what it is, this is a solid album that is pure fun, and great to dance to. So until we see the next steps, let’s leave it at that, shall we?