Rob Zombie Records Three Songs for ‘Hellbilly Deluxe 2′ Special Edition

Like many of the more aware and intelligent musicians still out there, Rob Zombie doesn't have a whole lot of faith in the music business anymore. Even though his latest album, 'Hellbilly Deluxe 2,' debuted at number eight on the Billboard Top 200, the first week sales of 49,000 were less than half of what its predecessor, 'Educated Horses,' sold in April 2006. The decrease is indicative of what's happening across the board.

"The record industry is dying," Zombie told Noisecreep. "I think they dropped the ball a long time ago and they're never going to recover from it. Everybody loves music, everybody's always gonna want to make music and listen to it, but nobody wants to actually purchase music anymore. That's the trick. So for me, it's a weird time because the music scene is alive and well. It's just the music buying public is not. A year from now, I don't even know if they'll be pressing CDs anymore. Or if they do, stores won't even bother carrying 'em."

Maybe in an effort to get one more marketable product out there before it's too late, Zombie is placing three brand new tracks on a special edition of 'Hellbilly Deluxe 2,' which will come out on Sept. 28. The songs, 'Everything Is Boring,' 'Michael' and 'Devil's Hole Girls and the Big Revolution,' were recorded in early July and mark Slipknot and Murderdolls drummer Joey Jordison's studio debut with Zombie. The re-release also includes a remix of 'The Man Who Laughs,' the original of which was on 'Hellbilly Deluxe 2.'

In addition, the deluxe version of 'Hellbelly Deluxe 2' will feature a video for 'Mars Needs Women' (shot during the Gruesome Twosome tour with Alice Cooper), a live version of Cooper's classic 'School's Out' with Cooper himself and a DVD tour documentary entitled 'Transylvanian Transmissions,' along with all-new expanded artwork.

The three-song gameplan might be Zombie's future modus operandi. As much as he likes the cinematic experience of many full albums, he admits that the format has become impractical.

"I like the thought of the band writing, say, one song a month and putting it up there," Zombie said. "Say we've been on tour for six or eight months and we don't have time to stop and make a whole album. It would be cool to put out two or three songs we've written and then keep going just to keep it energized. And truthfully, when you make a new album ... you go, 'OK here's 11 new songs, five of which we'll never play live. And here's the two or three singles that will always be in the set.' So it could just be a different way to do business that's really sort of like the old way of doing things. Back in the '50s and '60s people weren't making albums, they were pressing singles and then an album was basically a collection of all the singles."