Danzig-The lost tracks of Danzig

Evilive/Megaforce
2007

Danzig (the person) went through a transition when he started Danzig (the band) in the late 1980’s. Much of the mystery that had previously surrounded him when he was fronting the Misfits and Samhain seemed to disappear as he emerged into the limelight. He seemed to do a lot more posing and taking himself seriously and unfortunately the music seemed to suffer as well. This band has been around for about twenty years and this is a two-disc collection of rarities and outtakes. I wasn’t aware he had this many leftover songs, but perhaps many of them were left off because they didn’t have “dark” or “black” in the song title. The set comes with a booklet that has plenty of pictures for what that’s worth, but more importantly is has background on each track and why it wasn’t used. I always find that type of information interesting because I am always wondering why certain songs were left off of albums. The music is what matters and largely it seems like these songs are very much typical Danzig songs. I don’t think they were left off because they were inferior, but rather because they didn’t fit in with the bulk of whatever album they were intended for. However, I have never been that big on this band. The music this band churned out always seemed to be thinly disguised, second-rate AC/DC riffs and largely the success of the song is primarily dependent on Glenn’s vocals. That wasn’t always the case in his two previous bands although his voice had always been a huge part of every group he has been in. There were some tracks here that were decent enough because Glenn kept his vocals strong and managed to maintain the momentum throughout the entire song. However there were other tracks that were so painfully dull that I had to shake off oncoming drowsiness long enough to find the remote and move to the next song selection. My biggest problem with this band might actually be that Glenn finally had the control and support to get decent musicians yet the music here was always lukewarm at best. Even when he got a good musician in the band like punk legend Chuck Biscuits or Prong leader Tommy Victor it just seemed like their energy was sapped and they became zombies churning out cheesy crud. Back to the CD’s at hand, if you like Danzig then you will likely love this because it’s the same old thing and a whole lot of it fitted into decent packaging. It wasn’t as bad as I feared, but it did indeed take me several sittings to get through this much Danzig.