Review by Rick Eaglestone for MPM
Rob Zombie has been building his singular, fevered universe since the late 1980s. From the grimy, industrialised swamplands of White Zombie’s early New York days through to the chrome-plated, B-movie pandemonium of his solo career. His latest album The Great Satan, doesn’t just continue that tradition but continues to crank the whole carnival up to another level.
For Many Hellbilly Deluxe remains the landmark – the record that proved White Zombie had always been Rob Zombie’s vehicle. The Sinister Urge pushed the industrial metal elements further, Educated Horses went unexpectedly melodic in places, and Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor and The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy both doubled down on the sheer density and texture that had become his calling card. The Great Satan sits comfortably in that lineage but carries with it a ferocity and self-assurance that makes it feel like a man utterly at the peak of his powers.
The album detonates into life with F.T.W. 84 – irreverent, snarling, and utterly unapologetic There is a raw, almost primitive energy here that feels like a deliberate callback to the earliest White Zombie recordings, stripped of polish and absolutely dripping with attitude. If you need an explanation of why Rob Zombie still matters in 2026, start here.
Tarantula follows the opener with something that coils and crawls rather than simply charges, this is one of the album’s more hypnotic moments. There is a groove to it that is almost psychedelic in its persistence, recalling the strange, looping qualities of the deeper cuts on Astro-Creep: 2000
(I’m a) Rock ‘N’ Roller is where The Great Satan reveals its wicked sense of humour. This is Rob Zombie at his most theatrical and self-aware, a track that wears its identity as a declaration of war. It bounces along with a loose, swaggering energy that will remind long-term fans of the more groove-driven moments from The Sinister Urge, and it is an absolute earworm that refuses to leave your skull once it has taken up residence. Beavis and Butthead would lose their minds.
Heathen Days still has the honour of one of the album’s first genuine head-turning moments, this track carries a weight and texture that feels like it has been marinating in decades of influence and experience. The riff structure here stands out as something particularly purposeful – not just heavy for the sake of heavy, but heavy in a way that has something to say. There are echoes of the mid-period White Zombie sound in the bones of this song, and they are very welcome indeed.
Who Am I? is a surprisingly introspective title for a Rob Zombie record, and the track earns it. This is the album’s first hint of something more reflective – not soft by any measure but carrying a lyrical weight that sets it apart from the more frenetic tracks around it.
Black Rat Coffin takes the album back to full riff-monster territory, and this is hands down one of the album’s crowning glories. The title alone tells you everything and nothing simultaneously, and the track delivers on every lurid promise it makes. This is quintessential Zombie – cinematic, enormous, utterly committed to its own internal logic. If this track ever gets an accompanying video, it needs to be directed with the same gleeful excess that made House of 1000 Corpses such a visceral experience.
Sir Lord Acid Wolfman is peak Zombie absurdism, and that is absolutely a compliment of the highest order. The title is simultaneously ridiculous and magnificent, and the track matches it beat for beat. There is a showman quality running through this one, a theatrical wit that stretches back to those early White Zombie EP covers assembled by hand in a downtown Manhattan.
Punks and Demons moves into the album’s latter third with unapologetic anarchy, this track is built for maximum impact and delivers exactly that. It carries echoes of Hellbilly Deluxe’s most relentless moments – that sense of a machine that simply will not stop, driven by some ungodly combination of diesel, distortion, and pure spite. The interplay between the band members here is exceptional, speaking to years of intuitive, locked-in chemistry.
The Devilman has a captivating narrative quality, atmospheric and layered in a way that feels like a score rather than a conventional rock track. Zombie’s filmmaking sensibility is at its most palpable here with Out of Sight giving the listener a moment to breathe, This is not a ballad in any conventional sense – nothing about Rob Zombie’s world traffics in convention – but it does allow the groove to expand and the atmosphere to settle before the album’s final push.
Revolution Motherfuckers has the subtlety of a wrecking ball. This is a fist-first, no-questions-asked call-to-arms that sits somewhere between the rabble-rousing energy of La Sexorcisto at its most ferocious and the polished menace of Zombie’s solo peak. The more you listen to this album the more you get from it, and Revolution Motherfuckers is one of those tracks you will find yourself returning to at increasing volume.
Welcome to the Electric Age – A title that could serve as a manifesto for the entire Rob Zombie enterprise, a track it absolutely earns that weight. There is something genuinely euphoric buried in the noise here – a sense of arrival, of a world fully realised and fully inhabited. It is the sound of a man who has spent four decades building something and knows exactly what he has built.
The Black Scorpion’s industrial textures take a more prominent role here, the machinery of Zombie’s sound laid bare in a way that will delight fans of his most mechanised work. There are moments where this feels like a lost track from Hellbilly Deluxe, that grinding, relentless quality that made that record such a landmark.
Unclean Animals leans into the penultimate stretch with something that growls and prowls rather than simply charges, this track has an almost primitive, ritualistic quality that is deeply compelling. It is one of the album’s most surprising moments in terms of texture, and one of its most memorable.
The Great Satan closes with Grave Discontent, and it is a remarkable finish. Slower, heavier in a different way, carrying a weight that the more frenetic tracks earlier in the record simply do not. Grave Discontent delivers on every promise made and a few that were never explicitly stated and lingers long after the runtime ends.
Rob Zombie does not need to court new audiences or reinvent his sound for credibility – The Great Satan also sees the return Riggs and Blasko back to the fold and really leans into that horror film aesthetic.
There are moments here that will take long-time fans back to the very beginning – that early mix of White Zombie rawness & American pop mythology. There are moments too that could only exist now, made by someone who has spent four decades refining and perfecting a vision, somewhere between a grindhouse cinema and a thunderstorm. The Great Satan is an album that demands to be played loud, repeatedly, and without apology.
The Great Satan Track listing:
- F.T.W. 84
- Tarantula
- (I’m a) Rock “N” Roller
- Who Am I?
- Black Rat Coffin
- Sir Lord Acid Wolfman
- Punks And Demons
- The Devilman
- Out Of Sight
- Revolution Motherfuckers
- Welcome To The Electric Age
- The Black Scorpion
- Unclean Animals
- Grave Discontent
Rob Zombie Lineup
Rob Zombie – Vocals
Mike Riggs – Guitar
Blasko – Bass
Ginger Fish– Drums
Rob Zombie online:
https://www.facebook.com/RobZombie
https://www.instagram.com/robzombieofficial
The Great Satan is available now for pre-order in a variety of formats including a limited box set and accompanying apparel at https://robzombie.bfan.link/the-great-satan.
