Few artists can claim to have achieved success fronting three completely different groups in three distinctly different musical genres, but then Glenn Danzig is like no other performer.
Danzig first announced himself in the New Jersey punk rock scene with horror punk act The Misfits. He fronted the band from 1977 until disbanding it in October 1983. Danzig soon shifted his creative talents to his new act Samhain, where he advanced beyond the thrash-based punk mold toward a far darker and experimental sound that was more gothic- and metal-influenced. By producing two albums and one EP during Samhain's four-year existence, Danzig developed a larger cult following with the underground act than he achieved with The Misfits, which remains to this day.
But it was Danzig’s move to Rick Rubin’s newly founded Def Jam Records (later renamed American Recordings), a name alternation (to simply Danzig) and a change in band members in 1987 that saw the artist make one final genre transition, this time into a straight heavy metal sound, and one that propelled him from the underground to worldwide success.
For 19 years, Danzig has weathered numerous shifts in band personnel and label moves to produce eight full-length studio albums, one EP and a live album, his last release being 2004’s acclaimed "Circle Of Snakes." But for all the extensive touring he has done throughout his career, he has only made it to Australia once—back in 1983, when his group featured the classic lineup of guitarist John Christ, bassist Eerie Von and drummer Chuck Biscuits—to support "Thrall - Demonsweatlive." At the time of this interview, that was set to change, with Danzig ready to make his almighty return in August after a 13-year absence. The concert will likely be his second and last visit ever here.
Speaking from his office based in Los Angeles, I caught up with the quietly spoken man in black about his upcoming plans to release two new albums; his return to Australia; his involvement in former Misfits guitarist Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein's new project, Gorgeous Frankenstein; and his various other works in progress outside his namesake band.
“I’m always busy!" Danzig laughs. "I don’t even sleep anymore. Outside of Danzig, I just finished working with [renowned British artist] Simon 'Biz' Bisley on a graphic artwork adaptation of John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ for my comic company Verotik. That was amazing. Since then it’s just been movies, which includes ‘Ge Rouge’ [the Verotik voodoo zombie comic book feature film that Danzig plans to direct]. I think that’s enough for me at the moment. It’s crazy. We [Verotik] have so much shit going on, I don’t even know where to start.”
Among Verotik’s busy release slate, Danzig has finally scheduled the arrivals of two projects that have long been in the works, the first being his follow-up to 1992’s "Black Aria." The album "Black Aria II" is conceptually based on Lilith, the first wife of Adam. It is due some time in September.
“It was supposed to come out last year, but I was switching distributors at the time, and I didn’t want to give it to the old distributor. So basically I waited. Now that my distribution deal is done here in the U.S., it’s finally on a release schedule," he says.
"The album itself has been already been recorded for some time. I started recording it at the end of 2004 and into the beginning of 2005. But I’ve had the album written since 2000 or early 2001! [laughs] Finishing it was really a matter of finding the time in-between tours, making other albums and all the other crazy shit that I do. I actually had to sit down and actually force myself to do it. [laughs again] That’s really what I had to do.
"Once the album was finished, it was more the question as to whether or not I wanted to turn it in to my old distributors. I simply decided not to. But what I’ve [done] since then was to spend a little more time refining it a bit more. I went back into the recording studio and recorded another track for it, which I would have to say is very creepy. It’s all vocals. There’s no music on it. There are so many layered vocals on it that it almost sounds like there’s keyboards in there. It’s just the way the vocals are layering and working with and against each other. It’s a very creepy effect.”
With 14 years between the release of the original "Black Aria" and the upcoming sequel, a few changes in style and sounds are to be expected.
“I would have to say that this album is even creepier than the other one. It’s a little more Eastern-flavored, because there’s a lot of drums on this one. That’s because it’s all based around the time and place of Lilith," Danzig explains. "I tried to inject that flavor in there. But there are also some similarities to the original. You’ll hear it. I’m pretty happy with it.”
When asked whether people will understand the premise of "Black Aria II" compared with his other work in a solo band, Danzig remains confident that history will somewhat repeat itself.
“I think those who enjoyed and understood the original 'Black Aria’ will like this one just as much. I mean, ‘Black Aria’ did really well here in the U.S. [laughs] Wasn’t expecting that. It seemed to be very well-received by the fans, and there were a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise normally buy Danzig albums who went out and bought it. So I was pleasantly surprised. I think we’ve passed the gold status and [are] approaching close to platinum. That’s still a huge shock for me.”
Danzig's second planned release this year is the long-talked-about compilation "Lost Tracks Of Danzig," which contains a host of previously unreleased material from his early beginnings to the present.
“ ‘Lost Tracks Of Danzig’ is old stuff that dates right back to the first Danzig album [1988’s "Danzig"] right through to now. I was only able to start work on this album when the court case was finally sorted out. When I left American Recordings in 1994, Rick Rubin sued me and I sued him. I ended up winning all my unreleased material back. Anything he never released, including any live shows we recorded that he never put out, I won back and own. There was some stuff that he has yet to turn over because he can’t find them—well, he says that he can’t find them—but I have most of the recordings. He still has the rights to the albums that were released through his label, but we’re trying to get them back now because he hasn’t been accounting back to us properly. So we’re trying to get those back from him. But that’s a whole other story.
"We . . . shot a video for one of the songs on this new album . . . That’s called ‘Crawl Across Your Killing Floor.' That was a song that didn’t make it onto ‘Danzig 6:66 Satan's Child.’ This album wasn’t planned as a way of clearing out the vaults just for the sake of getting new material out there. It’s something that fans have been asking me for. I always get questions from fans as to how they can get ahold of this track or that one. There are a lot of old second-rate demo cassettes of songs that were half-finished floating around out there. So I just sat down and sifted through the songs and just seeing which ones were good enough to be on an album and which ones weren’t. So far there’s about 26 or so songs.”
While a lot of the songs on "Lost Tracks Of Danzig" have rarely been heard outside the studio—namely the covers of David Bowie’s "Cat People" and Marc Bolan’s "Buick MacKane"—the tracks that have been in fans' hands for some time are generally the unfinished versions that found their way into the hands of bootleggers.
“God knows how they get ahold of those," Danzig says. "Sometimes I would leave the studio with a cassette and you would loan it to a friend, and they would borrow it and copy it. And then they would give it to their friend, and so on. So all the fans have 10th-generation copies of the songs that weren’t even complete. Some of those songs didn’t even have the right lyrics. Those songs were all at different stages of completion. Some needed guitar tracks, some need bass tracks or some even needed lyrics, vocals. A lot of the stuff that I did with the original lineup was primarily just Christ and I going in and doing the bass and guitar tracks ourselves. So some needed proper bass tracks.”
The compiling of "Lost Tracks Of Danzig" hasn’t been without its dramas, with time and engineering mistakes making the album a challenge from the word go. “Some of this stuff was so old that I had to have the tapes baked. What happens is that when tapes get really old, it will no longer play on the machine. It slides all over the place, and all the actual sound recordings on there start falling off. So you have to take it to a special company, who will then bake those tapes in a special oven. It’s then that you have one play to transfer it to another 24-track, or in this case, all onto the hard drive. We’ve had to go through some 32 tapes in the baking process so far, and I think we’ll have to start doing some more . . . to finish the album.
"The other problem we’ve had is engineering problems. We found this out when we were trying to put together the acoustic version of ‘Come To Silver' from the recording sessions for ‘Danzig 5—Blackacidevil.' The vocals on the original were sung through an old '40s/'50s microphone to get that creepy, weird sound. We were experimenting a little with the song at the time, and I ended up recording an acoustic version that had this nice straight vocal on it. So when I went in to remix it with my current engineer for this compilation, we found out that the old engineer that worked on that album didn’t think that we were going to be using it, and went and wiped the track. So I had to sing the whole song again. You just never find out about this stuff until you put the tape up on the machine," he laughs.
Looking farther into the future, Danzig says there are no definitive plans for a follow-up to "Circle Of Snakes" any time soon.
“We’ll see. I mean, eventually there will be another album, but not right now. I’ve really been concentrating on releasing ‘Black Aria II’ and finishing up this ‘Lost Tracks Of Danzig’ compilation. I have to have this done by the end of August if I want it to come out in late November. That’s what’s really been taking up my time of late. I’ve also been writing scripts for movies and a few other things as well. So my life is a little crazy at the moment.
Few artists can claim to have achieved success fronting three completely different groups in three distinctly different musical genres, but then Glenn Danzig is like no other performer.
