Better known these days as a shlocky horror film director, Rob Zombie’s first album since 2001's The Sinister Urge draws from a wider frame of music, with glam rock and sleek, smooth electronic grooves infusing the most potent of these new songs. ‘Foxy Foxy’ oozes with a retro swagger, fleshed-out guitar riffs making it a tune that easily could have slipped into N.E.R.D’s repertoire.
A Noddy Holder-like holler dominates ‘The Scorpion Sleeps’ with its “Yeah yeah yeah” refrain, while ‘100 Ways’ simmers with a menacing Dre-like beat. But although Zombie has certainly made concessions to modernism, he hasn’t totally neglected his past leanings, with ‘Let It All Bleed Out’ being a hard-fisted electro-metal explosion. ‘Ride’ too should please old friends, though throughout there’s a bounce, openness and lightness. Despite titles like ‘The Devil’s Rejects’, ‘Death Of It All’ and '17 Year Locusts’ there’s little dark about Educated Horses, and the shift in styles, notably the blues infused ‘The Devil’s Rejects’, means this is far from a grind-fest.
Zombie has made his most accessible and most ambitious record to date. Suits you sir!