ROB ZOMBIE On Touring With SLAYER: ‘It Wasn’t Horrible, But It Wasn’t The Perfect Match’
Rob Zombie will promote his new album, “The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser”, with a number of festival appearances this spring and summer in addition to shows with DISTURBED and KORN. He told Headlines & Global News about why those bands fit well on a bill with Rob Zombie: “We haven’t done tours with DISTURBED before, so I don’t know how that’s going to be. I think it will be fine. We wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it would be a good match, but I haven’t done it. KORN, we’ve done at least four tours together before, and it’s great. Our audience, their audience, it’s a great mesh. Everything about it is a perfect mixture, so that’s why we love doing it. It’s hard to say. We did a tour with Marilyn Manson a few years ago and that was a really good match, Alice Cooper was a really good match, but sometimes you tour with a band you like, and you’re good friends with the guys, but the crowds just don’t match. You can really see the division in the crowd.”
Asked to give an example of a pairing that didn’t work, Rob said: “We did a tour [in 2011] that was us and SLAYER. We’re good friends with SLAYER, they’re all great guys, but for some reason on that tour it really felt like it’s our fans, and it’s their fans. Backstage was great and the vibe was great, there was nothing between the bands, but you could feel it wasn’t one solid crowd. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t the perfect match.”
Prior to SLAYER‘s 2011 “Hell On Earth” tour with Rob Zombie, SLAYER frontman Tom Araya spoke to Revolver magazine about why he thought it was a pairing that would be successful. He said: “I think, after thirty years, I think SLAYER has arrived at a cool factor. We’ve gotten to the point where it’s cool to be in it. I think it makes for a show to come and see. Zombie has that cool factor, we have that cool factor now, so it’ll allow people who maybe aren’t into both bands to check it out. To me, it’s a bill that works good, that works a lot better than [SLAYER‘s 2009 Mayhem festival co-headliner Marilyn] Manson. That was a very different audience for us. Manson‘s also very theatrical, but Zombie has more groove. Manson‘s all doom and gloom. [Laughs]”
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