This review covers the alternative metal track White Zombie – Grease Paint and Monkey Brains.
This track was released in 1995 on the album Astro-Creep: 2000. The track was also featured in the Playstation game Twisted Metal 4.
The track starts with a music box. It pitch-bends down towards the end. From there, the lead guitars come in along with the drum kit. The vocals then come in for a verse.
From there, the vocals take the track into the first round of the main chorus. This ends with a voice sample.
After that, the lead guitars drop out somewhat before the vocals take the track into the next verse. After that, the vocals take the track into the main chorus. An instrumental section follows this which features a guitar solo.
A lengthened instrumental section comes in after before laughing samples come in with various ways they are pitch bent. The vocals then come in for another verse.
After that, the vocals take the track into the main chorus again. After that, the lead guitars lead the track out.
One thing is for sure, there is a fair number of reasons to look positively towards this track. The track has a very well realized carnival sound. It’s always interesting when a track tries to incorporate a theme into the track and this one certainly did so quite successfully with that twist of horror. The various sound effects help boost that theme.
The vocals and guitar really give this track a nicely done twisted sound. They both are able to produce that sound of evil. The added voice sample works very well in helping this along.
My only problem with this track is that it’s almost impossible to understand half of what the vocals are saying. The thing that saves this track is that you didn’t necessarily have to understand the vocals to get a sense of what this track is about. It’s a downside to be sure, but this is one of those rare cases where it didn’t have a huge impact in the overall sound.
Overall, this is a very solid track. The samples used to push the carnival theme works very well. Meanwhile, the vocals and guitars work very well to give the track that twisted horror sound. The voice sample used part way through works very well to help that along. While the lyrics are hard to understand, they don’t have to be understood necessarily to get a good sense of what makes this track great. So, a very well done track.
Score
7.5/10
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
