Why So Blu?

Rob Zombie’s Icon 2 (CD Review)

If you count 2003’s Past, Present & Future and 2006’s 20^th Century Masters: Millenium Collection: The Best of Rob Zombie, then I guess you can safely say this is Rob Zombie’s third greatest hits album on the Geffen Records label.  But who cares?  This is Rob Zombie!  Even if he put his own line of dog food out there I would buy it all.  But really, you are all probably wondering what’s so different about this third compilation album?  I know I was.  So if you have a few minutes, I would like to show you around Rob Zombie’s Icon 2, in stores now.

First off, I know every Zombie fan out there is probably a bit confused over the fact that Geffen Records released this.  It’s only natural to exhibit this confusion.  After all, him leaving Geffen late last year and signing with Roadrunner Records delayed the release of my favorite album of the year so far, Hellbilly Deluxe 2, not to be confused with the upcoming special edition reissue of Hellbilly Deluxe 2 on September 28^th.  Confused yet?  I am a little bit with this next statement.  While this compilation contains several tracks that were not on his previous two greatest hit albums, most notably “The One,” “Meet The Creeper,” “Foxy Foxy” and “American Witch,” it also contains three tracks from his latest Roadrunner Records’ CD, Hellbilly Deluxe 2.  How did that work out?  My best guess is that there must have been some behind-the-scenes kind of deal where Geffen still kind of half owns these tracks too since the album was originally supposed to come out on their label anyway in late 2009.  I think.

So as you might expect, the compilation pretty much takes us on a journey from the early success of White Zombie (the historic tracks that provoked my interest in Ford Mustangs) all the way to Rob’s most recent solo project, Hellbilly Deluxe 2, whose full title is actually Hellbilly Deluxe 2: Noble Jackals, Penny Dreadfuls and the Systematic Dehumanization of Cool.  Wow!  That’s a long title, huh?  I took the liberty of listing all the titles you will find on the 2-disc set below.  Oddly enough, “Mars Needs Women” is actually the unreleased version of the song, without the long acoustic intro, that’s scheduled to be released on the September 28^th special edition reissue of Hellbilly Deluxe 2.  Geez!  This all makes your head hurt if you think about it too much, doesn’t it?

*

Disc 1

1. Thunder Kiss ’65

2. Black Sunshine

3. Super-Charger Heaven

4. More Human Than Human

5. Feed The Gods

6. The One

7. The Great American Nightmare (featuring Howard Stern)

8. Superbeast

9. Dragula

10. Living Dead Girl

11. Demonoid Phenomenon

12. Meet The Creeper

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Disc 2

1. Feel So Numb

2. Never Gonna Stop (The Red Red Kroovy)

3. Scum Of The Earth

4. House of 1000 Corpses

5. Foxy Foxy

6. American Witch

7. The Lords Of Salem

8. Let It All Bleed Out

9. The Devil’s Rejects

10. What?

11. Sick Bubblegum

12. Mars Needs Women (new version)

*

So whether your like me and you always like to play the best of Rob Zombie as your soundtrack while driving your own “Black Sunshine” around town or maybe you have some holes in your Zombie music collection yet to fill, then you owe it to yourself to check this one out.  Icon 2 can be had for as little as $9.99 this week at Best Buy, so you really have no excuse not to pick up 24 of the most hard rocking songs ever to be pressed on that shiny reflective pitted plastic platter known as a CD.  Now that’s serious bang for your buck, isn’t it?

Until next time…