POP MUSIC AND JAZZ REVIEWS : New Genre for White Zombie

White Zombie started life as a sludgy noise band from the same New York scene that spawned Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore, pure enough in its vision to appeal to the anti-rock indie crowd, starkly alienating, no fun. Last year, White Zombie moved to Los Angeles and put out its first major-label album for Geffen.

What kind of band is White Zombie these days? At the well-filled Palace on Thursday, the band enshrouded the stage with thick smoke a full half-hour before it went on stage, while the roadies were still setting up the drum kit. Fans, many more of them, had a reasonably good time. Tattoos and unwashed hair go a long way in Hollywood.

Monotone riffs were shoe-horned into pop structures; the standardish speed-metal bottom was punctuated by fashionable punk-funk drum fills and overlaid by singer Rob Zombie’s eerily James Hetfield-like metal groans. (White Zombie’s sound is as close to that of Metallica’s last album as early Slayer was to Metallica’s first.)

The sound was full and strong, as far from noisy, Sabbathy drone as it may be possible to get in neo-metal and just sloppy enough to qualify as alternative. The new Zombie seemed to be a cartoon-gothic thing, not unlike a cross between the horror-movie pastiche of Danzig and the biker-gothic of Zodiac Mindwarp. It’s entertaining and stadium-ready--but ultimately one-dimensional.