Educated Horses marks the turning point when Rob Zombie became more filmmaker than rocker, i.e. when he started making albums in between his movie projects rather than vice versa. Educated Horses is also the last Rob Zombie album I bought (unless you count Zombie Live, released the following year). In my memory it goes down as the lukewarm CD that killed my interest in Rob Zombie the rocker, even as my interest in Rob Zombie the filmmaker was mounting. For that reason, I haven't given the album a fair front-to-back chance in many years, so I did my best to sit down for this listen with an open mind.
The cover art here is certainly new territory for the artist. Gone are the ghoulish makeup, occult sigils, & psychedelic colors of the White Zombie era & his first 2 solo records; in their place we have...a black & white photo of regular-guy-Rob in a denim jacket, standing in the woods, looking up & slightly to the left. It seems to signal a shift toward maturity. Does the music bear this out? Well, I wouldn't say mature exactly, but it does lessen the industrial excesses of his previous 2. The samples & keyboards are still there, but there's no turntablism & the mood is tasteful rather than garish. On the whole, Educated Horses is a muscular rock record, like a less riffy version of the early White Zombie sound. He's going for more arena rock, less metal this time around, as songs like the heavily Gary Glitter-influenced "The Scorpion Sleeps" make obvious.
The other stylistic throughline for this album is something I hinted at earlier: Rob was a filmmaker now, & although his music always had a cinematic edge, Educated Horses sounds less like a standalone rock album & more like a soundtrack to a horror movie that doesn't exist. His trademark ambient interludes (the album intro "Sawdust in the Blood" & "100 Ways") sound more like film score than DJ breaks, & the huge orchestral strings in "Death of It All" recall Tyler Bates's soundtrack work for Zombie's films.
One thing I appreciate about Rob is that he always made short albums (in his solo career anyway--White Zombie is another matter). Educated Horses does its thing in 38 minutes, in an era when 70-plus-minute CDs were the norm. Even if you're not enjoying the album, it's over before you know it. My favorite song, then & now, is "17 Year Locust," a massive Sabbathesque stomper. The main riff isn't very interesting (in fact, it's probably the 50th time you've heard it), but the energy & atmosphere is amazing. The massive production on the drums is a mule-kick to the chest when the full band comes in, & the wah-wah keys that drive the verse sound like Stevie Wonder's signature clavinet. By the time the sitar (!) & nylon acoustic finish trading solos, you're already reaching for the repeat button.
"Let it All Bleed Out" is an interesting, not always successful blend of the aforementioned styles: a thrashy (but not quite thrash) main riff & a slower, Soundgarden-esque alt-rock bridge. Rob sings in the same old cadence as seemingly half the songs on Hellbilly Deluxe, plus he seems to be aping Jim Morrison on the chorus. The moody acoustic-driven "Death of It All" is buoyed by the aforementioned string arrangement, & "Ride" has a nu-metalish main riff, despite Rob usually avoiding the Korn sound even though the press & public lumped them together. It's understandable why Rob didn't use the song "The Devil's Rejects" in his film of the same name--it sounds too close in style to "House of 1000 Corpses" from The Sinister Urge, despite the 2 films being about as different stylistically as you can get.
"Devil's Rejects" is one of 2 songs on the album that tie in to Rob's movies. (3, if you count "Foxy Foxy," which seems to reference a character from 3 From Hell, a film Rob wouldn't make for another 13 years.) The other is the album closer, "Lords of Salem," a big doomy lurcher with a thundering chorus, recorded from a live performance. After the song, the band transitions into another number before the recording fades out. It's a fun, ragged, punkish way to close the record.
Is Educated Horses the disaster I remember? Definitely not. I can confidently say I like more than half of the album, & a few songs transcended the record to become all-time favorites. But it's the first record Rob had a hand in that was anything less than a front-to-back banger in my opinion, so in hindsight I understand why I perceived it as a letdown.
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