The Zombies
The World of The Zombies

*NOTE: There is a mark that plays 11 times loudly at the start of track 1 on side 2, "Tell Her No." There is another mark that plays 4 times at a moderate level at the end of track 2, "Woman." There is also a mark that plays 7 times at a moderate level about 1/8" into the last track, "She Does Everything For Me."

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top-quality sound that's often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers ("relative" meaning relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don't agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

The World of the Zombies is for all intents and purposes a reissue of their 1965 debut album, Begin Here, with a few track changes, the most important of which is the addition of "Tell Her No."

The drums here are clear and punchy and the bottom end is solid. The vocals do not get too bright as they have a tendency to do on some copies.

When you get a Tubey Magical copy like this, that Hammond B-3 sound is glorious. Smooth sweet vocals and dead on tonality complete the sonic picture here.

Just for fun sometime go to popsike.com and check out what the original first Zombies record on Decca sells for. Try $1500 and up! And people think our prices are high -- we ain’t never charged that kind of bread.

This vintage Decca pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of The World of The Zombies Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1970
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Live Zombies

In 2008 and again around 2010 I had a chance to see the newly reformed Zombies play locally and they put on one helluva show. That rich keyboard sound Rod Argent pioneered influenced a ton of bands I love, especially Pure Pop groups like Jellyfish and Crowded House.

What We're Listening For On The World of The Zombies

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

• She’s Not There
• Sticks & Stones
• You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me
• I Got My Mojo Working
• Summertime
• Kind Of Girl

Side Two

• Tell Her No
• Woman
• Road Runner
• Just Out Of Reach
• Nothing’s Changed
• She Does Everything For Me

AMG Review

The Zombies aptly portrays the quintet of Chris White (bass), Rod Argent (keyboards/vocals) Colin Blunstone (guitar/vocals), Paul Atkinson (guitar), and Hugh Grundy (drums) in terms of the band’s fresh blend of intelligent Brit-pop. Their efforts are equally laudable on the strength of an original such as “Tell Her No” as they are on the blue-eyed soulful medley interpretation of the Miracles’ “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” with Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me.”

This is stylistically complemented by the R&B rave-up on Muddy Waters’ “I Got My Mojo Working” and the ultra hip jazzy arrangement of the Gershwin standard “Summertime.” The Zombies’ obvious appreciation for adeptly crafted melodies and rich vocal harmonies likewise made them favorites of pop fans as well as more discerning listeners.