La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One

La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One is the third studio album by American heavy metal band White Zombie, released on March 30, 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 metal sound they had pursued since Make Them Die Slowly (1989), while incorporating groove-based elements into their sound as they evolved away from their roots in punk rock and noise rock. 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. It has since been regarded as one of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time.

Album information
The album's sound is primarily groove metal with multiple B-movie samples. Rob Zombie explained he "wanted to keep a groovable dance element in the music", a trait that he found was often absent in metal music of the era. Iggy Pop provided a spoken introduction to the single "Black Sunshine".

In a 2021 interview, Sean Yseult reflected that the band were influenced by rap music during this time, including Ice-T, Run-DMC, LL Cool J, and Public Enemy: "Rob was very intent on merging some of the rhythms and beats of what we were hearing into some of our songs, and it worked well."

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.

Release and promotion
La Sexorcisto was a 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, after the success of "Thunder Kiss '65", which reached number 26 on the Mainstream Rock chart. It was certified Double Platinum by the RIAA, and gold by the CRIA.

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. 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. 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. 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. The La Sexorcisto tour concluded in May 1994 with four Japanese shows, which were supported by Pantera.

Critical reception and legacy
Upon release, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One received generally favourable critical reviews. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune called the album a "tuneless but entertaining free-for-all", praising its guitar and sampling arrangements. Similarly, Peter Atkinson of the Record-Journal described it as "Deliberately sloppy, as 'Psychoholic Slag', 'Cosmic Monsters Inc.' and 'Grindhouse (A Go-Go)' indicate, and delightful because of it." Don Kaye of Kerrang! praised the album's overall heaviness, describing the experience of listening to White Zombie as akin to "being trapped alive inside a blurry, scratchy, black and white print of that one horror movie that scared the living shit out of you when you were a kid. Check it out, and you'll begin to understand." Denise Stillie of Metal Forces opined that, in spite of a lack of standout tracks, "the overall power of the album is undeniable".

Retrospective reviews of the album have been widely positive. Jacob N. Lunders of AllMusic claimed that La Sexorcisto "Perhaps [co-defined] the future of heavy metal, [...] nearly [equalling] fellow classics Guns N' Roses's Appetite for Destruction, The Cult's Electric, and Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger in significance". John A. Riley of PopMatters described the album as both an "exemplary metal album" and, noting its heavy use of samples, "an exemplary postmodern collage on par with better regarded non-metal LPs such as Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981) and the Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique (1989)". Chris Krovatin of Kerrang! argued that the album's success proved that, "Even as grunge and alt-rock introduced new levels of vulnerability and introspection to heavy music" in the 1990s, "people still wanted something powerful and fun [...] with La Sexercisto [White Zombie] provided all the druggy, creepy, high-octane heavy metal that fans craved, even if they were too focused on looking disillusioned and thoughtful to admit it." On the eve of the album's 30th anniversary in 2022, MetalSucks called La Sexorcisto “a monumental moment in metal history, an example of how weird, far-out, and fun metal could be at a time where it was shaking on its legs."

In 1995, Raw listed La Sexorcisto as one of the 90 essential albums of the 1990s. In 2002, the album was ranked at number 85 on Hit Parader list of "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 CDs". In 2004, it was voted as the 195th greatest heavy metal album of all time in Martin Popoff's book of The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time. In 2005, it placed at number 282 on Rock Hard list of "The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time". In 2016, Loudwire ranked La Sexorcisto at number 89 on its list of the "Top 90 Hard Rock + Metal Albums of the 90's". Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 93 on its list of the 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time in 2017; in 2023, the same magazine listed "Thunder Kiss '65" as the 84th greatest metal song of all time.

Track listing
All lyrics are written by Rob Zombie; all music is composed by White Zombie.

Some pressings of the CD incorrectly divide tracks 12 and 13, beginning track 13 at 3:31 of "Grindhouse (A Go-Go)".

Personnel
Adapted from the La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One liner notes.


 * White Zombie
 * Rob Zombie – vocals, illustrations, art direction
 * Jay Yuenger – guitar
 * Sean Yseult – bass, art direction, design
 * Ivan de Prume – drums
 * Additional musicians
 * Iggy Pop – spoken word (track 4)


 * Production and additional personnel
 * Kristin Callahan – photography
 * David Carpenter – assistant engineer
 * Alison Dyer – photography
 * Michael Golob – cover art, art direction
 * Andy Wallace – production, engineering, mixing
 * Howie Weinberg – mastering

Chart positions

 * Album


 * Singles