The preferred medium for music has changed quite a bit in my lifetime. When I was born in the 80s, the vinyl LP was still king, but 8-tracks were still tolerated for their portability and cassette tapes were taking hold. It wouldn’t be long until the compact disc, or CD, started to take over. Portable like a cassette, but with crystal clear audio even surpassing vinyl, made the CD very desirable. It was also really cheap to manufacture, though actual players were quite expensive at the onset (as is the case with most new technology). A CD player in your home stereo was a status symbol that quickly became ordinary, while players in the car or as part of a PC tower would remain expensive and uncommon into the 1990s. Other formats would attempt to overthrow the CD, but nothing took hold. What finally knocked the CD off of the mountain is what would eventually crush the DVD and Blu Ray: digital. People realized they liked the convenience of just downloading music. Audio compression techniques were perfected throughout the 90s and into the 2000s to the point where only the snobbiest self-proclaimed audiophiles could claim to tell the difference. Once massive sections of CDs at record stores dwindled and some multi-media stores have abandoned them all together.
With the era of physical media essentially over nostalgia has been allowed to take hold. And one of the main benefactors has been the old school vinyl LP. Listening to a record on vinyl is a different experience from that of a CD or digital one. There’s an imperfection and variance to the audio experience as variations in the player’s needle or something as mundane as a little dust on the record itself can alter the experience. It’s also an active experience as the listener has to physically flip the record over after 20 minutes to a half hour or even change the disc all together if the album is a long one. The package has to be physically bigger to accommodate the medium’s size which affords ample opportunity for oversized artwork, liner notes, and pictures. Cheaper records are released in little more than a slipcase for the record, while most feature a gatefold design that opens to reveal a more dramatic image. The medium is popular enough that most new albums are released on CD and vinyl today. The pressing numbers are far lower than what they were 10 or 20 years ago, but there’s enough demand out there that bands and labels see a benefit to producing them.
Back in 1996, that was a rarity. Vinyl was all but dead and most new releases ignored it. For the band Danzig, it was an era of new beginnings. The band’s founder and namesake, Glenn Danzig, had served out his recording obligations to American Recordings, the first major label he had worked for. The first four Danzig albums, plus one EP, had done well, though not exceptionally so. The band wasn’t that far removed though from it’s first of two top 100 hits, “Mother,” so there was some appetite for the band’s services. Hollywood Records came calling and offered Glenn Danzig what was reported as a 9 figure deal to join the label. Danzig took the money and promptly replaced every member of the band that had played on the most recent record and produced the band’s fifth studio album Blackacidevil.
The record bombed. Danzig ditched the heavy metal crooner persona he had refined at American in favor of an electronic/industrial mix. The vocals were often buried under a thick layer of distortion and traditional instruments were sometimes left out all together. Alice in Chains axeman Jerry Cantrell contributed to a few tracks, and the album did have its moments with the fuzzy blues number “Come to Silver” and the morose album closer “Ashes,” but it’s hardly a controversial statement to refer to Blackacidevil as Danzig’s worst album to date. To complicate matters further, when some parent groups found out that Hollywood Records had signed the “satanic” Danzig to its label there was some public outcry. This was a problem for the label’s parent company, The Walt Disney Company, and the controversy combined with the album’s poor performance caused them to cut bait. Danzig was again a free agent, but a wealthier one, and he even got to retain full distribution rights to the album.
Because of the timing of the album’s release and poor commercial performance, Blackacidevil never saw release beyond CD and cassette. The album would be reissued a couple of times as a website exclusive and as an enhanced version through E-Magine music in 2000. The enhanced version featured new artwork by the late Martin Emond as well as three additional tracks, none of which did much to elevate the poor original release. Ever since, the album has been mostly ignored by Danzig. The songs are never played live any longer and the band even ignored it for the chronological 20th anniversary setlist that featured songs from every release except Blackacidevil. There seems to be little enthusiasm for the record from both the band and the music community. The album still has its share of defenders amongst the diehard fanbase, but even those defenses have become more muffled over the years. As the years have gone by, Blackacidevil has never shaken off its status as the black sheep of the Danzig catalog. Driving that point home even further is the fact that the album is the only Danzig release to not be released on vinyl. All of the American Recordings releases received a vinyl release, though some were exclusive to certain regions of the world. Even the post Blackacidevil albums received sporadic vinyl editions. The follow-up album, Satan’s Child, was released in Europe in small numbers and it’s follow-up received a curious one-off release as well that was apparently licensed by the band, but not overseen. After that, vinyl started making its comeback so Circle of Snakes, Deth Red Sabaoth, and even the covers records received vinyl editions. And in the case of the most recent, they received numerous special editions of varying colored vinyl and picture discs.
Even though Blackacidevil is not an album I much care for, it has been a hole in my Danzig vinyl collection for some time. I am, by no means, a completist, but I have at least one vinyl edition of every Danzig release. The only ones I’ve passed on were some of the singles and the Glenn Danzig release Black Aria II, quite possible the worst thing he’s ever put his name on (well, until the movies). I even used to have a dedicated room for my collecting, before I had kids, in which I had my Danzig vinyl collection arranged on the wall in special LP frames. It always bothered me that Blackacidevil was not represented, but now that era is coming to a close.
It was years ago that Glenn Danzig indicated he was looking to re-release some of his work on vinyl. Blackacidevil was mentioned along with his first solo release, Who Killed Marilyn?, but nothing came of it. Then pretty much out of no where, solicitations for a Blackacidevil vinyl release started appearing online. They started at smaller places on the web, but soon even Danzig’s current label Cleopatra Records put the record up for sale. It’s to be released in October and the album will have two pressings: black and silver colored vinyl. The jacket features the updated Martin Emond artwork from the reissue while the track list features just the original ten from the Hollywood release. It looks to be a gatefold release and even though it’s referred to as a “deluxe” reissue I don’t see anything new attached to it. Some places are also selling a CD reissue as well.
If you have read my review of the album then you already know that it isn’t something I recommend. This is a release for the diehard fans that either do actually like the album or are like me and just see this as a missing piece to their collection. With the amount of editions Cleopatra pressed of the more recent Danzig Sings Elvis I guess I shouldn’t be surprised they’d give this album a look. It gives me some hope that maybe more reissues are on the way. I don’t have that much interest in rebuying albums I already have on vinyl, but with Blackacidevil getting a release that just leaves one, last, grail item in the Danzig catalog: Final Descent. Yes, the fourth and final Samhain release is the only one from that band to not see release on vinyl. It was a hastily thrown together effort as it came out after the band had been dissolved and turned into Danzig, so it was only released on CD and tape. The entirety of the Samhain catalog is long overdue for a re-release of some kind and is far more worthy than Blackacidevil. Hopefully that’s something being actively discussed. As for Blackacidevil, I have no intention of doing a review of just the vinyl when I have it in my possession. I ordered a silver copy since I’ll likely never actually listen to it. It’ll come in, I’ll look it over, and file it away in my Danzig record collection where it likely will go untouched for years, but at least the catalog will now feel complete.
When it came time to make my 666th post on The Nostalgia Spot, I could not think of a more fitting subject than something Danzig related. I even delayed this post by a few days to make it work, but this is an occasion you only get to mark once so pardon my lateness.
Yes, that green demonic skull at the base of the cover should look familiar to anyone who is a fan of either Danzig or Samhain. Put that image in white and it’s what most recognize as the logo for those respective bands. That particular skull was present on the cover of Samhain’s debut LP Initium, which debuted a mere month or two after this issue, and it really came to life on the third LP, November-Coming-Fire. It was split in half in 1988 when the first Danzig record debuted so that half of it could occupy the record’s cover and the other half the back. Since then, it’s been featured on numerous t-shirts, posters, and promotional fliers. Interestingly, the image never again appeared so brazenly on the cover of another Danzig record. A waxy, red, version does appear on the cover of Danzig 7 and it was on the more recent covers record as well, albeit as a sticker on the cellophane.
It had to happen, no? After ranking all of the songs puts out by the Glenn Danzig-fronted Misfits last Halloween to ranking every song put out by Danzig in celebration of the band’s 30th anniversary, only Samhain remained. The middle child of Glenn Danzig’s bands, Samhain has always been the most overlooked and least appreciated. This is largely due to the band only really existing for about 3 years, barely giving it time to develop its own sound. Predictably, the band sounds like a mash-up of The Misfits and early Danzig as this was basically Glenn Danzig going solo.
Consider this a book-end to the coverage of Danzig’s 30th anniversary from a couple of weeks back. During my write-up for that, a celebration of all of Danzig’s original songs, I made a comment about one entry in particular (“Halo Goddess Bone”) where I mentioned how it would be neat to know just what Glenn is saying. I openly hoped it would be included on the then upcoming Hidden Lyrics of the Left Hand Volume II, which was slated for release in August. Well, that volume is now available and wouldn’t you know, “Halo Goddess Bone” was indeed included.
We have made it to the final 13, the best of the best that Danzig has written and recorded. This feature has totaled nearly 15,000 words as we’ve had to sort through 116 songs just to make it this far. Now considering we’re only covering 13 in this last post, I don’t think this one will run quite as long, but who knows? For these last batch of songs, it likely comes as no surprise that most of them come from Danzig’s first four albums. Those are often considered the best the band put out. That’s not to say what has followed has not been worthwhile, far from it, but it is what it is. And of these 13, we still actually have a cut from Danzig 7 to discuss and a few from The Lost Tracks of Danzig compilation, which really is a fantastic release for fans of old and newer Danzig. These songs, as well as the preceding dozens, were hard to rank. Even as I look over my final rankings, there’s an urge to tinker with it and move things around, but I suspect no amount of adjusting would ever truly satisfy me. Even my number 1 is a bit tenuous. Since it’s my ranking, I just went with my favorite song, so anyone else’s rankings could easily feature something else in its place. That’s what makes the whole exercise worth while though. Let’s get to it!
We’ve covered 80 songs by the band Danzig, but still have 49 to go! We’re well past the poor and mediocre and now well into the best songs the band ever recorded. The rankings already have become quite a chore as some of these songs are hard to separate from others, but it must be done!
Two days ago we covered the first 40 songs of this countdown. In the span of those 40 songs we mostly covered the truly bad, the less bad, and the mediocre. We’re now into the songs that I think are objectively good, or at least solid, which bodes well since we still have 89 songs to go! If you’re just hopping in and want an explanation for how I arrived at these songs, check out part one, because away we go:
64. Dirty Black Summer (How the Gods Kill) – This one was probably the first single to get any sort of consistent airplay on MTV. It was hardly a hit, but if you tuned into Headbanger’s Ball around release you probably saw it. It features what I would call a typical Danzig riff, but it dresses it up enough to form something catchy. Glenn does this odd vocal hiccup in between lines during the chorus, which definitely is a unique touch for the song. I know a few who find this one a bit annoying as it might be the most commercial sounding song Glenn has ever released, but I’ve always found it rather catchy.
The Nostalgia Spot 