DANZIG

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If you don’t know who Glenn Danzig is, well I’m afraid you’ve picked up the wrong magazine. Danzig’s name has been synonymous with the darker side of the turntable since founding the Misfits back in ’77. Although it was four years in between, last November finally saw the release of the follow-up to the ill-received Blackacidevil with Danzig 6:66 – Satan’s Child. If you are one of the many who lost interest with the release of the Danzig 5, this is the one for you. Although there’s still an industrial tinge to it, it’s blended well with crushing metal riffs, pounding drumbeats, and Glenn’s dependably booming vocals.

Since the album’s release, the band, now Joey Castillo [drums], Todd Youth [guitar] and Howie Pyro [bass] have been touring extensively, a tour that began with the reunion of Danzig’s second band Samhain. Prior to the recent show here in Toronto, I had a chance to have a few words with Glenn on everything from the new album and former band members, to comic books and pro wrestling.

DV: So how’s the new album doing for you?
GD: Good.

DV: I was wondering if you could give me your interpretation of a couple of the songs, what they mean to you or maybe what you were thinking when you were writing them: ‘Into The Mouth of Abandonment’
GD: Umm… (long pause) let’s see… I have to sit and look at the lyrics and decipher it. I’ve written so many songs (laughs)… and we don’t do it live in the set right now so it’s not fresh in my mind. Once I do a record I move on …. That one, it’s pretty much a song about isolation, and dealing with the isolation in a very aggressive way.

DV: What about ‘Satan’s Child’?
GD: ‘Satan’s Child’ is pretty much a big "fuck you" to all religions.

DV: Cool. The word "Lilin", what does that mean?
GD: It’s the children of Lilith. Lilith was the first wife of Adam.

DV: I heard that you just recorded a cover of a Germs song in the studio?
GD: Yeah, we did ‘Caught in My Eye’.

DV: What would make you decide to do Germs of all bands, especially being more a less a pioneer in many punk circles?
GD: The Germs were around when we were… when we were around with the Misfits. We just decided to do it in the studio one day.

DV: Did you ever do any shows with The Germs?
GD: No. They were an LA band, we were an East Coast band.

DV: Would you ever contribute anything to a tribute album?
GD: To The Germs?

DV: No, just like any tribute album in general.
GD: It would depend on who was doing it, and who was involved in it.

DV: What about if someone was to put together something like a Roy Orbison tribute, would you be into something like that?
GD: Yeah, again it would depend on who was putting the tribute together, you know what I mean? I mean, I might. You never know.

DV: Black Aria 2: how is this coming along? Has it been started yet?
GD: I haven’t started recording it yet but it’s been written for a year and a half.

DV: Is this the same thing as the rumored Death Dealer soundtrack?
GD: No, the Death Dealer soundtrack is not gonna come out because there’s no Death Dealer movie (laughs).
[Note: Death Dealer was one of Glenn’s first comic books on his Verotik imprint.]

DV: Will the second Black Aria be thematic, like how the first one was in part an accompaniment to Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’?
GD: No, it won’t be.

DV: So it’ll be more like the last three tracks of the first, like how they were more kind of…
GD: More Celtic, yeah.

DV: I heard you’ve got an album coming out of b-sides and unreleased stuff from the first Danzig album on coming out.
GD: Yeah, usually when you do a record there’s somewhere between like 2 and 5 songs that don’t make it on the record. So yeah, there’s a record of all that stuff coming out. It won’t come out for a while though.

DV: Are there any song titles you want to divulge?
GD: A lot of people have always asked when ‘White Devil Rise’ is gonna come out. It’ll be on there. There’s a version of ‘I’m The One’ with bass and drums that’ll be on, lots of unreleased songs like ‘Angel of The Seventh Dawn’… a ton of stuff.

DV: ‘Crucifixion Destruction’? [Note: According to Musician magazine, this song was to have been included on Danzig 4]
GD: (Sighs) There’s no such song as ‘Crucifixion Destruction’.

DV: (Laughing) That was something someone made up?
GD: Yeah.

DV: It was cool title anyway. About ‘White Devil Rise’, what was the reason you didn’t tack it onto Danzig 4p?
GD: The song still remains unfinished. I’ll still have to go in and work on it a little. We actually tried recording it on Danzig 5 too.

DV: Really?
GD: Yeah, so there’s a version of that too.

DV: Seeing how it’s a criticism of Farrakhan, do you think there’ll be any controversy with the release of this song?
GD: I could give two fucks.

DV: Are you doing a new home video or DVD?
GD: Yeah, I’m getting all the stuff back from Rick Rubin, like all the videos from Danzig 3 on, and I got all the stuff back from Hollywood, so yeah, there’ll be a killer video and DVD release.

DV: Cool. So I guess you’re troubles with American are all totally in the past now?
GD: Well, just about. Rick is finally gonna turn this stuff over it looks like, and I’ve been waiting like two years for this stuff to come back.

DV: You’ve just recently re-released Danzig 5, and when it first came out there were a lot of mixed reviews of it, some negative. Did this kind of feedback have any bearing on the re-release of it?
GD: No. It’s just I got it back from Hollywood and… it had been out of print for a while so any copies that were still left in stores were left over. You know what, that’s what they [Hollywood] were saying. We found out later that they were pressing records even when they weren’t supposed to anymore… like, legally. So what we did was we put a really cool cover on it and added three extra tracks to it.

DV: So you were never tempted to remaster any of the stuff?
GD: No, we didn’t remaster any of it, we just added three tracks to it and put it out. And that’s the same thing we did with the Foetus remix EP for Sacrifice. Originally Hollywood pressed only did about five or ten thousand of ‘em then pulled it. So we’ve re-released it and added three tracks.

DV: Can you talk a bit about the Samhain boxset, like when can we expect to see that?
GD: In June.

DV: And what’s gonna be on it?
GD: All the previous re-released Samhain stuff will each come in their own little mini-cover. It won’t be that plastic crap; it’ll look like a real record cover. And then because we took the Unholy Passion stuff off Final Descent, we’ll put it on it’s own little EP like it originally came out. We filled out Final Descent with 4 unreleased tracks, including the original versions of ‘Twist of Cain’ and ‘Possession’, from Samhain.

[Note: The boxset release has now been pushed back to August 8, 2000 and will also include a double-live CD, as well as unreleased video footage.]

DV: I hope you don’t mind, I’m reading this quote from [ex-Danzig guitar player] John Christ. This is out of another magazine, and it was just a quick blurb he said: "I know he [Danzig] burned himself on the Danzig/Samhain tour and had to go to the hospital for a couple of weeks". Is there any truth to that statement whatsoever?
GD: (Incredulous) No, there’s no truth to that whatsoever!

DV: Yeah, it sounded a little odd to me.
GD: That’s really weird, because he saw somebody from my band in LA and said, "Hey, how did the tour go?" or whatever and it was like "Fuckin’ great!" And he was like "Wow, Glenn did two sets a night?" "Yep" and he said "Wow!". So that’s bullshit, he’s just talking shit. ‘Cuz he’s shit and his record is shit. Have you heard it?

DV: (Laughing) Yeah, you know what? I heard..
GD: ..I heard it’s pretty awful..

DV: Yeah, I just heard one song, and the riff was alright until..
GD: ..He started singing..

DV: ..until his vocals kicked in, then it was like… god, what was he thinking?!?
GD: Well, there you go. He’s just angry because, you know…

DV: Because he’s got nothing going on.
GD: Exactly. So rather than like, deal with it he’s gonna talk shit about us. Everybody was really happy with the Samhain and Danzig thing everywhere we played. It was pretty cool. And I mean, me going to a hospital: no, I haven’t been to a hospital in a million years. Anyone who knows anything about me knows I don’t go to hospitals. I don’t trust doctors. So first off, that’s bullshit, you know what I mean?

DV: Yeah.
GD: So he’s talking out of his ass.

DV: Yeah, I drove down to Cleveland to see the show there. It was great!
GD: Man, that’s bullshit! He’s an idiot. What do fuckin’ people gotta make up stories for?

DV: Yeah, and I mean that one sounds a little far-fetched to start off with.
GD: Yeah (laughs).

DV: What happened with Eerie Von and Damien on the Samhain tour?
GD: Well, Eerie Von was not asked to do the tour because of personal problems between all the band members. He started talkin’ shit about Steve [Zing], and then about London [May]. And Damien was gonna do it up until Iggy put together a last minute tour, and he’s Iggy’s guitar player so he couldn’t do it. So then Todd Youth actually filled in.

DV: Yeah, Todd did a great job.
GD: Thanks.

DV: As far as Todd, is he a permanent member of the band?
GD: For right now, you know what I mean? Things always change, but for right now everyone’s really happy in the situation so it’s cool.

DV: Does he still have Chrome Locust going?
GD: I don’t know if he’s got it going. I know he’s planning on doing a second Chrome Locust record sometime, when there’s downtime from Danzig.

DV: Have you heard the first one?
GD: Yeah, I’ve heard it.

DV: What do you think?
GD: Umm… it’s okay, it’s okay. The guitar sounds good on it (laughs)!

DV: So Josh Lazie’s no longer in the band. What was the reason for him leaving?
GD: He wanted to spend more time with his son Rocco. There was no like, big blowout or any of that kinda shit. We’re all still friends. It was just a life choice he made, instead of being on the road all the time, you know what I mean? He wanted to stay home with his son, who’s only like 4 going on 5, and his son needs a dad around.

DV: Right. So how’s Howie Pyro [ex-D-Generation] working out as the new Danzig bass player?
GD: Great. It’s workin’ out really well.

DV: I don’t know if you’re doing it on you current tour leg, but when you were doing the Samhain tour you were closing the Danzig set with ‘Earth AD’. Why did you decide, after all these years, to start playing Misfits stuff again?
GD: Well we didn’t do it every night… only if the crowd was really good. One of the reasons we did it was because those other guys can’t play it… Jerry Only and those guys. It’s fast and they can’t play it… and they pretty much suck anyway, so we just decided to do it and blow everybody away, and they were pretty blown away.

DV: Is there any truth to the rumor that you’re gonna redo ‘Bloodfeast’ or ‘Death Comes Ripping’?
GD: No. But those were actually both originally Samhain songs. I gave them to fill out the Earth AD record because originally we only had five songs on it.

DV: Do you still dig playing the older songs, like ‘Twist of Cain’ and ‘Mother’, or is it more or less just to appease the fans?
GD: Naw, we don’t play anything we don’t wanna play. Basically Danzig has six albums plus the Thrall EP, so pretty much what you hear in the set is what we wanna play.

DV: Cool. I guess it’s kind of been a tradition that you’ve had a weird rider, where you have…
GD: ...stuff to fuck with promoters, yeah.

DV: Yeah, are you still doing that?
GD: No, we didn’t do it this time. I don’t know why. There really just wasn’t time, you know what I mean? Normally we just put something in there to freak out promoters, and have ‘em see whether we’re serious or not about it.

DV: Are you surprised at how many people take it seriously?
GD: No, people are stupid generally (laughs).

DV: Are you still devoting a lot of time to doing your comic book company, Verotik?
GD: Not a lot of time, but enough, you know? We’ve still got a lot of projects.

DV: Who would you say is the sickest comic book artist out there right now?
GD: Comic book artist? Sickest (thinking)… uh, I dunno… I haven’t seen anything really sick out of an artist (chuckles).

DV: What about Vigil?
GD: Well, Tim Vigil has a six-page story in the new Morella book.

DV: Oh yeah? Excellent.
GD: Yeah, it’s a split book. Tim does one story where Morella introduces his sisters, and Rafa Garres, the Spanish artist, does the other story where it tells how Morella came to be. Yeah, Tim’s supposed to do some more stuff for us too.

DV: Getting back to your music, as odd as this may sound, have you ever considered doing an acoustic set, like an "unplugged" kinda thing?
GD: A long time ago we did two unannounced blues sets in LA

DV: Cool. So do you think you might be up for something like that in the future?
GD: Maybe someday. We’ll see.

DV: When was the last time you strapped on a guitar on stage?
GD: On stage? Uh… Samhain.

DV: Really? Been that long?
GD: Yup.

DV: Every think you’ll do it again?
GD: Nope.

DV: There’s been a whole slew of Misfits tribute albums out. Have you ever heard a Misfits cover, with the exception of something like Metallica or Kryst The Conqueror because that goes without saying, but have you ever heard a cover and just cringed, thinking "Oh my god, what are they doing?"
GD: (pauses) Kryst The Conqueror? That’s Jerry’s Christian band!

DV: Right, I was just referring to the so-called current day "Misfits".
GD: As far as hearing a Misfits cover that I like, no I haven’t really heard one that really blew me away. I mean, Cradle of Filth did ‘Death Comes Ripping’… it’s okay. But yeah, I haven’t heard anything really that like, knocked me out.

DV: You had that small part in Prophecy II. Have you toyed with the idea of doing anything, or have you done anything in any other movies?
GD: Naw. I don’t really have the time. It’s like, if it can fit into my schedule then cool, but if not then fuck it.

DV: (Referring to Misfits Jerry Only and Doyle appearing on WCW) Would you ever consider compromising your ideals to appear on pro wrestling?
GD: Nooo! (laughs) No, that was…

DV: Did you ever see that?
GD: Pretty fucked up!

DV: Yeah.
GD: Like… yeah, that was pretty stupid. They looked like a bunch of idiots. That was so sad!

DV: Yeah, I missed it but I heard they basically went on there and just got their asses kicked, and you’d have to be paying someone a lot of money to do something like that.
GD: I don’t think they got paid anything!

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(DAVE VICKERS and THE FANG MAGAZINE’s resident (current day) MISFITS fan THE IRON CHEF, have been embroiled in a rare vinyl destroying match and war of monosylabic insults since “THE CHEF” read this article.)