THE BEAST

Former WHITE ZOMBIE bassist Sean Yseult has criticized Rob Zombie's decision to release a live recording of the group's "Astro-Creep: 2000" album, saying that "it's kind of lame when bandmembers do that."

The ex-WHITE ZOMBIE frontman and his solo group played the classic 1995 LP live in its entirety at the 2016 edition of the Riot Fest in Chicago. The performance was professionally recorded and issued as a live album, "Astro-Creep: 2000 Live", via Interscope/Geffen/A&M.

Asked in a brand new interview with the "Talk Toomey" podcast if she was "bummed" that Rob went ahead and played the full record without her involvement, Sean responded (hear audio below): "I wouldn't say I was bummed, but I'm a little confused. I actually don't even know — you mean he just performed it live, or did he record it and re-release it?"

After host Joshua Toomey confirmed that the performance was made available on CD and digitally last month, Sean said: "That's like a money-making thing, so now, of course, he's gotta pay me and Jay [Yuenger, former WHITE ZOMBIE guitarist] for our equal share of writing songs. But I think it's kind of lame when bandmembers do that, but, you know, it's his prerogative, if he wants to."

Insisting that she is "never gonna listen" to "Astro-Creep: 2000 Live", Sean went on to say: "I don't see his need to keep repeating the past. It's songs that we all wrote that he acted like he was miserable in the end. And why not do something new? I don't know."

Zombie said in 2016 that he had "many legit reasons" for not wanting to reform WHITE ZOMBIE, despite some fans' suggestion to the contrary. But he refused to divulge any details, explaining, "everything is not everybody's business."

In an interview with rock journalist Mitch Lafon, Yseult said that "it was a little bit of a slap in the face" when she first found out Rob was pursuing a solo career after WHITE ZOMBIE's 1997 split. She said: "After one year, we were supposed to be taking a break, and then we were gonna have a call and talk about getting back together and making a record. I knew that we weren't getting back together, but literally the next… Jay and I both said, 'We have more riffs. We'd love to write some more music.' And Rob kept saying, 'No, no, no. I think we're done.' And what are you gonna say? You can't tell the singer that he has to sing. [Laughs] Even though our manager told Jay and I that we should go on and continue on with WHITE ZOMBIE and get a new singer, we both refused that. But the slap in the face was that [Rob's] solo record came out, like, the next day, so he spent that year making a record, knowing that [WHITE ZOMBIE wasn't] gonna be a band again. So that was a little… you know… whatever. But, like, who cares? You know, really. I didn't care. I moved to New Orleans. I knew that we'd already broke up anyway."

Rob Zombie told The Pulse Of Radio that nowadays a lot of his audience isn't even familiar with the old WHITE ZOMBIE songs. "The crowds are really, really young and I've been noticing that with the set list too, because, you know, as the time has gone on, we've really worked the WHITE ZOMBIE material more out of the set, because we've been finding that it's not working like it used to," he said. "It seems like that those songs just seem now old to people and it's very strange."

The history of WHITE ZOMBIE came up when Rob Zombie was asked to comment on the publication of "I'm In The Band", a memoir from Yseult, who is also Rob's former girlfriend.

In the book, Yseult claimed that the departure of drummer Ivan DePrume led to the eventual disintegration of the group.

Zombie said: "I have not seen it [the book] so I can't comment. I can barely remember those days, so I'm glad somebody can."

He added: "Everybody likes to make up stories which aren't true. I don't think that's fair. Ivan left the band, John Tempesta came in and the band sounded better than ever, we kept playing and made bigger records and did more tours, so I don't see how that had anything to do with it."

Yuenger admitted to Crawdaddy! back in 2010 that he still harbored some resentment over WHITE ZOMBIE's demise. He said: "I would have liked to make another record, but it wasn't in the cards. On Rob's solo albums, you can see what he wanted to do, where he wanted to go. I always wanted to be in a rock 'n' roll band, where the primary instruments are guitar, bass, and drums, you know? We were living in New York City for all those years, hearing all the rap and techno coming out — my favorite bands back then were SLAYER and PUBLIC ENEMY. I was really all about sampling, and we put out 'La Sexorcisto' with all those samples, and it blew people away. We were, like, the first rock band to do that. And it was great, I loved it. But as time went on, the sampling and techno stuff started to dominate everything, and I really hated it. Now you can hear how little humanity is in Rob's stuff." Via Blabbermouth