La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One is the third studio album by American heavy metal band White Zombie, released on March 17, 1992 through Geffen Records. The album marked a major artistic and commercial turning point for the band. After the recruitment of guitarist Jay Noel Yuenger, White Zombie was able to successfully embrace the heavy metal sound they had pursued since Make Them Die Slowly (1989), while incorporating more groove-based elements into their sound. The album was the band's last to feature drummer Ivan de Prume.
The album was a critical and commercial success for White Zombie after the artistic failure of Make Them Die Slowly. La Sexorcisto became the band's first album to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at number 26 in 1993. The singles "Thunder Kiss '65" and "Black Sunshine" received heavy rotation on rock radio and MTV, the former earning the band their first Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance. The album has been certified two times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States.
The album's sound is a mix of groove metal and heavy metal with multiple B-movie samples. Rob Zombie explained he "wanted to keep a groovable dance element in the music", a trait that is often absent in metal music. Contrary to rumors, a "Devil Music Volume Two" was never planned for recording or release. Almost every song on the album made an appearance on the 1994 video game Way of the Warrior.
Touring and promotion[]
White Zombie toured for two years to promote La Sexorcisto. The tour was a critical success and some archived footage of the shows can be seen on the Let Sleeping Corpses Lie DVD. White Zombie began a five-month U.S. tour in April 1992, supporting such bands as My Sister's Machine, Paw, Testament, Pantera, Trouble and Crowbar.[2] In the fall of 1992, the band opened for Danzig on their How the Gods Kill tour in Europe and the United States, and wrapped up the year doing a brief U.S. tour, again supporting Pantera.[2] White Zombie spent most of 1993 and 1994 touring non-stop in support of La Sexorcisto. They toured with Monster Magnet in February and March 1993 and with Anthrax and Quicksand that summer.[2] White Zombie embarked on two more U.S. tours: one with Chemlab and Nudeswirl in the fall of 1993, and another with Prong and The Obsessed in early 1994.[2] The La Sexorcisto tour concluded in May 1994 with four Japanese shows, which were supported by Pantera.[2]
La Sexorcisto was both a critical and commercial success for White Zombie, climbing up the charts in the US and gaining massive MTV video airplay and mainstream rock radio airplay with "Thunder Kiss '65" and "Black Sunshine". Although released in early 1992, La Sexorcisto did not enter the Billboard 200 until 1993,[5] after the success of "Thunder Kiss '65", which reached number 26 on the Mainstream Rock chart.[6] It was certified Double Platinum by the RIAA, and gold by the CRIA.
Jacob N. Lunders of AllMusic praised the album with 4.5 out of 5 stars and claimed "Perhaps co-defining the future of heavy metal, White Zombie's major-label debut nearly equals fellow classics Guns N' Roses's Appetite for Destruction, The Cult's Electric, and Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger in significance".[1] In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked La Sexorcisto as 93rd on their list of 'The 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time'.[7]
5:43 - "Hula fast shorts, swing with a gassy chick. Turn on to a thousand joys, smile on what happened. Then check what's gonna happen, you'll miss what's happening. Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum. Tomorrow, drag" is Phillipa Fallon performing beat poetry in the 1958 teen film High School Confidential.
2
"Knuckle Duster (Radio 1-A)"
0:02 - "Ahorre, no compre sin visitar Empori..." is taken from a radio ad in Spanish. Translates to "Save, don't buy without visiting Empori..."
0:17 - "These are the facts as we know them. There is an epidemic of mass murders being committed by a virtual army of unidentified assassins" is taken from the 1968 horror filmNight of the Living Dead during a radio broadcast.
0:17 - The screaming in the background (sans falling lumber) is from the first scene of "True Confessions of Tori Welles" (with Tori Welles and Jerry Butler), approximately 10 minutes in.
2:23 - The ominous chanting that listeners hear is in fact the score from the 1976 horror filmThe Omen
4:00 - The Arabic chanting is taken from The Exorcist
8
"I Am Legend"
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9
"Knuckle Duster (Radio 2-B)"
0:00 - "Now, what we have to ask is why is it that God has admonished us to hate evil? Well, first of all, God loves ..." from a sermon by Atlanta pastor, Dr. Charles Stanley (pastor).
0:09 - "Y cuando tu vuelvas.." Daniel Santos - "Como se van las noches"
0:14 - "... And strangled them and finally dismembered their bodies"
0:20 - "homelessness and all that ..." sample are the words of the American radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
0:21 - "And now, the voice you've been waiting for ..."
0:10 - "He steps to the water and plunges in, making far more impression on his skull than on the lady" is from a 1950s teen instructional swimming film.
12
"Grindhouse (A Go-Go)"
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13
"Starface"
0:00 - "One. One is the beginning..." and "Oh Herbert, you are stiff!" samples from the beginning and end of the song are taken from the 1969 episode of Star Trek: The Original Series entitled "The Way to Eden"
2:27 - In the background there is an eerie jingle playing, this is from 1979's Phantasm. This sound effect was used earlier as the shuttlecraft interior sound effects throughout the run of the aforementioned Star Trek: The Original Series. (On the album "Star Trek: Sound Effects from the Original TV Soundtrack", it is Track 69—do a search for "shuttlecraft interior" on YouTube for confirmation.)
14
"Warp Asylum"
Personnel[]
Adapted from the La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One liner notes.[13]
^La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One (booklet). White Zombie. Los Angeles, California: Geffen Records. 1992.CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
[1]
