To produce the album, Rob initially teamed up with Nine Inch Nails multi-instrumentalist Charlie Clouser, who helped push him towards the more electronic- and industrial-influenced sound that appeared on Hellbilly Deluxe. However, due to other obligations, Charlie had to leave the project – his work can still be heard on opening song Superbeast – and was replaced by Scott Humphrey, who’d done keyboards and programming for acts like Metallica and The Melvins. The Zombie/Humphrey relationship was the one that gave Hellbilly Deluxe its distinct sound, and led to an extended collaboration between the two musicians, with Scott co-producing all of his albums through 2007 and co-composing the score to Rob's 2003 film debut House Of 1,000 Corpses.
“It was very much him and Scott Humphrey,” says Blasko. “My contribution was minimal at best, based on the collaboration they built. Whether or not I had played on Dragula, it still would’ve been a hit. It was a hit long before I played on it.”
The industry machine around Rob Zombie, however, had its doubts. In their minds, White Zombie was a hugely profitable act, and debut solo albums rarely did well from a commercial standpoint. While Rob was focused on making a record that he considered a perfect distillation of his sound, the people involved in his career thought that they were humouring a frontman before breaking a hard truth.
“In hindsight, Rob had every intention of this record exploding,” says Blasko. “He had every intention of taking this as a solo thing, and White Zombie being a closed chapter. But the presentation to us at the time was very much, ‘We’re gonna let him do this, and then he’s going to go back to White Zombie, because White Zombie is the cash cow, and that’s the brand. This is just to appease him, and once he realises this isn’t as successful as White Zombie, you guys can go on your merry way.’ They were very much minimising expectations. Which makes sense – you can’t predict something like that, and you very much want to keep everyone in check.”
In Zombie's vision, the guiding principle of the album was everything – literally, everything: gigantic songs, rock star guest musicians, and all of the monsters that dwelt in the cinematic catacombs of his mind depicted by the artists who’d inspired him over the years. When Rob found out that Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee was staying at Scott Humphrey’s Chop Shop studio after a stint in jail, he asked him the play on a couple of tracks (Tommy’s drums can be heard on Meet The Creeper and The Ballad Of Resurrection Joe and Rosa Whore).
For the album’s cover, Rob had legendary horror artist Basil Gogos do a portrait of him with an ‘X’ carved in his head; for the CD booklet, he had Marvel Comics artist Gene Colan and Dan Brereton create original depictions of his final form. He even had FX artist Wayne Toth recreate the robot from the 1939 Bela Lugosi vehicle The Phantom Creeps, which can be seen on the album's back cover.