White Zombie – It Came From NYC (2016, Numero Group) @320
if you haven’t heard early white zombie, they sound more like an AmRep band than something from Beavis & Butthead.
“Years before Beavis and Butt-head headbanged “Thunder Kiss ’65” and “More Human than Human” into the eternal rock video canon, there was primordial White Zombie—a quintessential, diabolically loud byproduct of Manhattan’s underground rock scene, born of art-school rendezvous and squalid apartment circumstance. It Came From N.Y.C. is the most exhaustive attempt so far to document the band’s wondrously ugly birth. Get reintroduced to White Zombie as New York noise-rock, a grotesque creation that clawed and threatened its way to crossover metal glory.
On June 3rd 2016, Numero resurrects White Zombie’s eternally out-of-print early EPs and LPs as It Came From N.Y.C. Spread across five LPs or three compact discs, all 39 tracks have been remastered by guitarist J. Yuenger and packaged alongside the original lurid artwork. The accompanying 108-page book painstakingly documents White Zombie’s punishing progression through scores of unpublished photos, period discography, a T-shirtography, and tales from the terrifying early years that stitch together the sordid story of a band whose true power eclipsed its mainstream heyday. White Zombie lives. Don’t be afraid.”