‘Beavis’ Brings Zombie Out of Dark : Pop music: After the exposure from MTV’s wiseacre team, the band’s ‘La Sexorcisto’ sales shoot from about 2,000 copies a week to the national Top 30.

“H uh-huh--huh --I think those guys are cool,” chuckles Rob Zombie of metal band White Zombie, praising--and mimicking--MTV’s fun-loving morons Beavis and Butt-head.

The feeling is mutual.

The controversial cartoon characters think the band is cool too, drooling over its noisy, campy “Thunder Kiss ‘65’ ” video. And it’s precisely that endorsement that has turned the previously unknown New York group into big sellers.

Yes, you might say White Zombie is huh-huhing all the way to the bank.

Since its release in March of 1992, the album--a Geffen Records release titled “La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1”--wasn’t selling enough to make the nation’s Top 100 charts, averaging only about 2,000 copies a week.

But the group’s video has been a fixture on “Beavis and Butt-head” since the summer, and the exposure--along with the bratty teens’ words of praise--have propelled the album into the national Top 30. Estimated sales now: more than 500,000 copies.

“Until they started showing (the video), it was an invisible album,” notes lead vocalist Zombie, sitting in a conference room of the West Hollywood office of Geffen Records. “I don’t even think half the people at this label even knew the record existed.”

Rick Krim, MTV’s vice president of talent and artists relations, explains the response to the “Beavis and Butt-head” exposure. “We had liked the ‘Thunder’ video and supported it with play on the various specialty shows,” he says. “That never really sparked significant album sales, the ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ exposure sure did. The sales response was pretty immediate. We saw that and put the video in real rotation and then the album really started selling. Almost everything that gets played on the show gets some sort of sales bump from it, but the sales increase for the White Zombie album was the most significant.”

Even before “Beavis and Butt-head,” the band--mostly through constant touring--had made a name for itself in the heavy-metal underground.

“We were working our butts off doing shows all over the country to keep this record alive,” says the surprisingly reserved 27-year-old Brooklynite, who refuses to divulge his real name.

“It wasn’t being played on radio. The record company withdrew our tour support ages ago. You can’t blame them because we weren’t selling a lot of records. So if we hadn’t been out there touring constantly, the record would have been dead long ago. Beavis and Butt-head wouldn’t have had any record to talk about.”

Despite the title, “La Sexorcisto Devil Music Vol. 1” isn’t lewd music geared to devil worshipers. “I just thought it was a cool title,” says Zombie, running his fingers through his trademark mane of dreadlocks. “I forget how easy it is to freak parents out. When the album came out some stores wouldn’t carry it because of the title--but they’re carrying it now.”

With the buzz-saw drone of Zombie’s vocals slicing through, the band’s raging music is rooted in the basic headbanging metal of KISS and Black Sabbath--but laced with ghoulish humor and scatter-gun references to comic books and B movies.

“If your brain is fried on comic books and TV, you’ll like this record,” explains Zombie, who named the band after a cheapie 1932 horror movie. “It makes you feel like you’re having a nervous breakdown.”

You can tell from the music that Zombie, the group’s chief creative force, grew up listening to mainstream rockers like KISS and Alice Cooper as well as adventurous alternative bands such as Black Flag and Bad Brains.

“I was in awe of bands like KISS, but it was those punk bands that really got me into playing music,” Zombie recalls. “I don’t have any music training, but those bands make you think you can do it yourself--which I did. I used to hang out at (the New York punk club) CBGB and listen to some awful music. I knew I could put together a band that played better than that.”

After forming the group in 1985 with bassist Sean Yseult, Zombie spent the next few years trying to hold it together. “For one thing, there were a lot of different members,” he says. “And making these cheap records for these small labels, it didn’t seem like the band was going anywhere.”

Though not tickets to success, those raw records--”Psycho Head Blowout” in 1987 and “Make Them Die Slowly” in 1989--caught the ear of Geffen Records, which signed the band in the summer of 1991.

Last year, with album sales floundering, personnel problems cropped up again. The lineup of Zombie, Yseult, guitarist Jay (J) Yuenger and drummer Ivan dePrume had been stable for a few years--but then dePrume was replaced by Phil (Philo) Buerstatte.

Before the MTV break, the band was down, but hardly out.

“We’ve been through just about everything--from personnel changes, to making bad indie records, to recording a flop major label album that was brought back from the dead by some cartoon characters,” Zombie concludes with a note of triumph. “And there’s dozens of problems I don’t even want to get into. Nothing surprises me now. Who the hell knows what’s next?”