On his Web site, darkest-of-the-dark heavy-metal veteran Glenn Danzig makes this promise about his upcoming movie: "full of zombies, snake rituals and some of the most gruesome scenes ever put on film." In a phone interview, he elaborates: "Some crazy voodoo rituals like you've never seen before. Bodies being burned alive. Hands being chopped off while they're still alive. There'll be decapitations, of course."

He laughs. "It's gonna be pretty wild."

Coming from 49-year-old Danzig, in his amiable New Jersey accent, none of these details seems shocking or even excessive. They're just his line of work. In addition to fronting Danzig, the rumbling and occasionally satanic metal band he formed in 1986, he runs the comic book company Verotik. He's also working on a script based on "Ge Rouge," the richly dark and violent comic series he started writing eight years ago.

"It helps me stay excited about doing music and then going back and doing the comics--I've been doing that now for over 10 years," he says, from his home in Los Angeles. "It helps me stay excited about doing all the projects I do. If you do the same thing over and over, eventually, you're going to get bored of it. And I would hate to get bored of music."

Danzig's black-leather music career began in 1977, when he formed the Misfits, a punishing New Jersey punk-and-metal band that helped define the term "hardcore." The band broke up six years later, and Danzig shifted to a bleaker, more gothic style--first in the experimental Samhain and later Danzig. The bulked-up, sweaty-haired frontman became a pop star of sorts in the late '80s, when, almost by fluke, MTV turned an obscure live version of his song "Mother" into a hit.

More importantly, Danzig's bands also influenced scores of metal and punk acts, including Metallica and Guns N' Roses, both of whom have called the Misfits a key inspiration. Danzig seems uninterested in this subject--"I guess it's all still living on, which is great," he says. But Paul Gargano, executive editor of Metal Edge magazine, calls the singer "definitely one of the most underrated artists.

"His influence is a lot more evident than we even realize it is," Gargano says. "He was one of the first artists to really bridge punk and metal. Look at this new genre today, when you have bands like My Chemical Romance taking the punk set of roots and twisting it with metal a little bit. I don't think anybody realizes consciously that Glenn was really the only one doing that for a long time."

Although Danzig has gone through many incarnations and lineups over the years, 2004's "Circle of Snakes" is a throwback to the days of Danzig. As always, you can tell how bleak it is by the song titles--"SkinCarver," "Skull Forrest," "When We Were Dead," "1,000 Devils Reign"--and the only frills are a bit of over-the-top squealing guitar by Tommy Victor (the ex-Prong guitarist).

"[The sound] hasn't really changed that much, but `Circle of Snakes' was a little more stripped down and that was a conscious effort on my part. I wanted to clear the air--it's the first record I wanted to do that's not part of a seven-part cycle," Danzig says. "Some elements I hadn't played with before, like double kick-drum. But we tuned down as low as we've ever tuned down."

But if Danzig hasn't changed over the past 30 years, heavy metal sure has. Since Danzig co-headlined on the first Ozzfest in 1996, Ozzy Osbourne's traveling metal extravaganza has turned into huge money, giving entire careers to bands such as Korn, Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach and Disturbed. For a few years, those growling, mopey bands defined "nu-metal," which filled rock-radio playlists and sold millions of CDs.

"I hate all that," Danzig says, and his critique isn't sour grapes. It never really mattered to him in the first place whether his bands appeared on MTV or the radio, he says, and many stations have added tracks from "Circle of Snakes." "When you've been around a certain time and you've accomplished whatever, no matter what artist you are, they'll listen to it," he says. "And as long as it's good, they'll play it."

Steve Knopper is a freelance writer.

Originally published Feb. 18, 2005.