With his debut single "Dragula" in the summer of 1998, Rob Zombie established his solo career as a musician, following a decade with groove metal psycho-holics White Zombie. The song features in games such as Twisted Metal 4, which also features Rob himself as a playable character, as well as on the soundtrack for The Matrix Reloaded.
Twenty-eight years later, deathcore stalwarts Signs Of The Swarm have released a standalone cover of the song, with a cadre of cameos led by skateboarding icon and Jackass star Bam Margera. Their music video serves as something of a shot-for-shot remake, capturing the grindhouse, psychedelic spirit of the original from all those years ago. Also featuring in the video are Lorna Shore singer Will Ramos, who just wrapped up their supporting run alongside Motionless In White's Sweat And Blood Tour, August Burns Red drummer Matt Greiner, skateboarder Dalton Dern, Dying Fetus drummer Trey Williams, and many more.
Musically speaking, it's an inspired take on the Rob Zombie classic. There are enough stylistic nods to the original, while taking it in a gruesome direction, with vocalist David Simonich's performance being the standout. This could have very quickly crashed and burned, but the band make it work and make the song their own, just as any cover worth a damn should do.
Check out the music video below:
In discussing how the cover came to be, drummer Bobby Crow offers the would-be contenders before they landed on Zombie:
We’ve been trying to find the right song to cover and put a SOTS spin on for years. We tossed up so many ideas, from The Prodigy, to Slayer, to Static-X. We used to spin ‘Hellbilly Deluxe‘ on repeat to keep us awake on long tour drives, and we love tracks like ‘Living Dead Girl,‘ ‘Superbeast‘ and ‘Spookshow Baby,’ but one day we just started mouthing out ideas for what a SOTS version of ‘Dragula‘ would sound like. Immediately, we were like, ‘DAMN! This is The ONE!
We took it to our producer and engineer Josh Schroeder, who helped us come up with some beat loops, we tuned the guitars way down to drop fuck, and it all came together within a day.
Simonich adds:
This video kind of spiraled out of control in the best way possible. We originally wanted to do a one-to-one recreation of the original video, but we couldn't find the right car. We were tossing ideas around looking at rentals, and a Polaris Slingshot came up as a polar opposite to what we were going for. Something clicked for us, and we thought that since we were trying to modernize the song, why not do the same for the video? We usually take our videos pretty seriously, so this gave us permission to let our freak flag fly. We started inviting any homies around the Eastern Pennsylvania area we'd be shooting, and it snowballed from there.
We had just gotten off tour with Lorna Shore, so we roped Will Ramos in. We've known fellow yinzers 156/Silence forever, so Jack Murray was an easy call. We hit it off hard with The Last Ten Seconds of Life, so we knew we had to make proper use of Tyler Beam's mustache. From there it got even more ridiculous as we started reaching out to ANYONE in the area we had connections with. Our good friend Rhys tour managed and did sound for us in a break from his schedule with Dying Fetus, so he called up Trey Williams, who we dressed in a robot suit. We got in touch with August Burns Red since it was RIGHT by Lancaster, and Matt Greiner was down to smash some tubs (Bobby and Galactic Empire's Kevin Corkran filled out the video-accurate drum line). And the absolute biggest shot in the dark was asking our friend Vicente who has shot videos for us and Bam Margera if he thought the skater would be down to drop in. As luck would have it, he was coming back to the West Chester area he made famous for the first time in months and made it happen! He brought along his friend and fellow pro-skater Dalton Dern, who suggested an ollie off a roof of a room in the warehouse we shot in. And that's not even everyone! It was the icing on the cake of a day summed up by the phrase, 'Sure, why not?' to great result!
Signs of the Swarm's most recent album To Rid Myself of Truth is available now via Century Media Records. They're about to take to the road this fall following their appearance at Louder Than Life Festival, supporting Nekrogoblikon on their 20th anniversary tour, as well as a mini-run of dates alongside The Last Ten Seconds of Life. Those dates are as follows:
10/16 Phoenix, AZ @ Van Buren
10/17 Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater
10/19 San Antonio, TX @ Vibes Event Center
10/20 Dallas, TX @ Echo Lounge
10/21 Houston, TX @ House of Blues
10/23 Orlando, FL @ The Beacham
10/24 Tampa, FL @ Ritz Ybor
10/25 Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead
10/26 Myrtle Beach, SC @ House of Blues
10/28 Philadelphia, PA @ Brooklyn Bowl
10/29 Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Bowl
10/30 Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
10/31 Norwalk, CT @ District Music Hall
11/01 Toronto, ON @ Opera House
11/03 Detroit, MI @ St Andrew’s Hall
11/04 Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues
11/05 Indianapolis, IN @ Deluxe at Old National Centre
11/07 Denver, CO @ Oriental
11/08 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot
11/10 Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory
11/11 Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
11/12 Seattle, WA @ Crocodile
11/14 Ventura, CA @ Majestic Ventura Theatre
11/15 Los Angeles, CA @ Belasco
10/13 Chicago, IL @ WC Social Club
10/14 St. Louis, MO @ Red Flag
11/18 Tulsa, OK @ The Vanguard
11/19 Louisville, KY @ Headliners
11/20 Columbus, OH @ Summit
11/21 Pittsburgh, PA @ Preserving
