(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Glenn Danzig, first with the Misfits and Samhain and later as a solo artist, has been one of the ultimate icons of gothic rock, capable of embodying like no one else that mix of apocalypse and shamanism that lurks behind every horror story. Not surprisingly, he has also been one of the foremost disciples of Jim Morrison.

Moreover, Danzig has absorbed a hint of Nietzschean �superman� culture. Danzig is not a cult figure: he *is* the cult of that figure.

The titanic �call and response� of Danzig (Samhain and Mother Of Mercy by Samhain, Am I Demon and Mother from Danzig�s first album, Long Way Back To Hell and Devil's Plaything from the second, Bodies and Sistinas from the third) have their place in the history of gothic music that stretches from Robert Johnson to Nick Cave.

In Danzig�s music, references to horror subculture are explicit: the Misfits skull was taken from a TV serial, *The Crimson Ghost*, while Samhain�s skull is the same one used by Marvel for the comic *Crystar*; the Misfits broke up on Halloween night 1983; the lettering used for the name Misfits was the same as in the comics *Eerie and Creepy* and *Famous Monsters Of Filmland*; many song titles (from *Night Of The Living Dead* to *Die Die My Darling*) are copied from famous horror films; the cover of Walk Among Us is the poster for *Earth Vs The Spider*; the cover of the first Misfits album shows the spider from an episode titled *The Zanti Misfits* of the TV series *The Outer Limits*. (Before becoming a rock musician, Danzig made a living writing horror film reviews�)

It is within this subculture that Danzig rediscovered the cursed personalities of Jim Morrison and Roy Orbison, both condemned by fate and by their art. The black masses he performs endlessly iterate that rosary of despair that white alienation has distorted from black blues. His powerful, flexible voice dominates these theatrical performances as few great show-business performers ever have.

After the Misfits dissolved, Glenn Danzig (who in 1981 had already released the solo 45 rpm single Who Killed Marilyn) formed a power trio with drummer Steve Zing and bassist Eerie Von. Under the name Samhain, they released Initium (Plan 9) at the end of 1984. The music was more or less the same �black� hardcore of the Misfits, with just a bit more �metal� and �glam.� The lyrics were far more macabre, dedicated to paganism. The main difference was the aggressive emergence of Danzig�s egomaniacal personality. The band�s signature track, Samhain, perhaps the peak of his �black� art, the long and dreamlike Archangel, the tribal and mysterious The Howl, and All Murder All Guts All Fun, the song closest to the insane fun of the early Misfits, all join the repertoire of classics of evil.

The EP Unholy Passion indulges in that horror, sometimes achieving effects even more clownish (albeit unintentional) than the Misfits. The title track, Moribund, and The Hungry End are as flawless as they are predictable displays of an acquired mannerism by a demon as evil as he is loquacious.

The adventure of Samhain ended in 1986 with the second album, November-Coming-Fire. The gothic spirit of the songs is further accentuated (even though the lyrics now deal with less bloody themes), along with the dark register of his howls and the otherworldly weight of the rhythms�Danzig masters music as both showman and shaman. His leanings toward heavy metal, evident in Halloween II, cannot disguise the fact that a Nick Lowe�style power pop actually flows in Danzig�s veins: In My Grip and Let The Day Begin are the most compelling tracks, the ones most worthy of the early Misfits. His crude Grand Guignol continues in the raucous choral theatrics of Mother Of Mercy and November's Fire, enjoys an excess of perversion in the obsessive danse macabre of Human Pony Girl, and sublimates for a moment in To Walk The Night, with arrangements so atmospheric they recall the Doors.

(The posthumous Final Descent revealed at least one noteworthy unreleased track: Lords Of The Left Hand.)

His universe of vampires, Martians, cannibals, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, demons, and murderers has no intellectual depth, yet it effectively represents its time. In his morbid fantasies, the social nightmares of a people of misfits are vividly reborn, just as B-movie cinema (to which his lyrics have often been compared) reflects the anxieties of the middle class. Danzig has stated that he aims to dismantle the image of Evil as the opposite of Good instilled in us by religious and secular authorities, restoring it to the more ambiguous value it holds in pagan civilizations. Indeed, each of his albums can be interpreted as a morality play set in a world where the boundary between Good and Evil has been shifted to an unknown point.

Taking advantage of a surge of interest in the Misfits, Danzig assembled a supergroup-style lineup (Eerie Von on bass, John Christ on guitar, and Chuck Biscuits, formerly of D.O.A., on drums) and officially launched his solo career (along with a massive publicity campaign emphasizing his demonic persona) with the album Danzig (Def American, 1988).
By deliberately slowing the tempo according to the dictates of horror-rock masters like Black Sabbath, Danzig highlights the ritualistic quality of his music: Am I Demon (the most �Sabbath-like� track) and Mother (the most theatrical, and also the current hit) resonate (at extremely low frequencies!) with a suggestive power that is primarily mythological, and indeed they became famous among his fans as gospel-like parables. Sometimes the funeral atmospheres are self-contained, as in Twist Of Cain, almost Kiss-like, but suddenly dropping into a cryptic blues, She Rides brings Danzig closer than ever to evoking the Doors myth.
Several tracks demonstrate how much his compositions (and especially his performances) owe to the �black roots� of rock: for example, in Soul On Fire, beneath the crude heavy metal arrangement, one can detect the filigree of a spiritual; his exceptional crooner abilities emerge forcefully in the way he �carries� the soaring melody of Not Of This World. Between the lines, one can notice how his songs are gaining greater psychological depth: tracks like Am I Demon and Twist Of Cain do not glorify Evil but instead portray personalities pierced by anguish, conveying a sense of desperate loneliness worthy of a Roy Orbison (his idol).

Lucifuge (Def American, 1990) shows even more obvious similarities to the Doors (and Morrison�s baritone) and, perhaps as a consequence, an even �blacker� feeling: Long Way Back To Hell is one of his peak vocal performances, a boogie in which Danzig displays his skills as both crooner and highly dramatic shouter; 777 is a spiritual twisted and exaggerated to the point of obsession and dazzle; Killer Wolf (aided by Christ�s Delta-worthy guitar work) is the most dragging blues of his career. In this way, in the end, it sometimes feels more like listening to AC/DC, or at most Aerosmith, rather than Black Sabbath, though the power trio always clings to the hypnotic cadences of the latter. I'm The One is even an acoustic swamp-voodoo shuffle sung with alternating whispers and screams in Presley�s spectral register; and in Blood And Tears Danzig does not hesitate to use a 1950s dance-hall ballad format.
Above all, it is the record of an increasingly tormented artist, wandering alone in an ever darker moral universe. Images of Evil are now paranoias and metaphors. The Misfits� �horror-core,� a parody of the 1950s, is transforming into a �folk-core,� an audio v�rit� of the 1990s. As with B-movie cinema, his subcultural art has come to be filled with deep and unsettling meanings.
Pain reigns supreme. Even the hardest Sabbath-like riffs, the heavy Kiss-like cadences, the visceral Aerosmith-style screams in more conventional tracks like Snakes Of Christ, Tired Of Being Alive, and Girl reveal frightening despair, wrenching emotions, and inner horror, almost like spirituals of Evil played in Hell by a band of demons. These tracks possess terrible power and intensity. The dramatic peaks coincide with the most faithful imitations: Devil's Plaything mimics Jim Morrison�s Crystal Ship; Her Black Wings approaches the possessed tonalities achievable only by a Nick Cave.

The problem with the third album, How The Gods Kill (Def American, 1992), is that the macabre and solemn riffs of Black Sabbath still resonate (Godless, in the style of Children Of The Grave) as do the tension bursts of Led Zeppelin (Bodies, a faithful imitation of How Many More Times). But Danzig, now a seasoned showman, with his sensationalist "shouts," can convey an extremely violent emotional jolt even in the most mundane contexts, as he does in the dramatic crescendo of Anything, the terrifying blues shudders of Heart Of The Devil, and especially the explosive Left Hand Black (marching like Born To Be Wild). The album�s climax is the ballad Sistinas, in which once again Danzig abandons his invented shouting Grand Guignol and instead blends the metaphorical �voices� of Cave, Morrison, and Presley for a vampiric excursion into the darkest recesses of the human soul.
When he hits the right cadence and register, no one can grasp like him. His entire sinister universe of demons and the damned then takes on an allegorical value, and the songs become parables of life (rather than anecdotes of death).

While the EP Thrall (1993) exploits the quartet�s enormous popularity without adding anything significant (only two new compositions, It's Coming Down and The Violet Fire), Danzig�s first truly solo work is a nine-movement symphony: Black Aria (Plan 9, 1992). It is somewhat his own "666" (Aphrodite's Child), an album entirely devoted to black religions.

4 (American, 1994) is a major disappointment. Sterile and limp, the album is a chant of self-repetition, compounded by attempts to mask creative fatigue with flashier arrangements. Cantspeak (keyboards, distortion, drum machine) and Sadistikal (almost a cosmic-psychedelic jam) nevertheless manage to exploit the new tools intelligently, while the old-fashioned requiems feel terribly dated. By the end of the year, Chuck Biscuits leaves the band.

Blackaciddevil (Hollywood, 1996), buried under a blanket of distortion and stuffed with drum machine experiments continuing those of IV, has even less to offer: apart from 7th House, Sacrifice, and Power of Darkness, the other songs are soporific. They wouldn�t even frighten Siouxsie.

Incidentally, Eerie Von, bassist for Samhain and Danzig, teamed up with a certain Mike Morance to record a disc of absolute originality, Uneasy Listening (Caroline, 1996). Borrowing stereotypes from classical symphonic music and horror soundtracks, the duo composed eight tracks ranging from the somewhat minimalist opening Cinerarium Waltz to the gentle baroque rondo of Into The Light closing the album, from the brass-fanfare funeral march of Misery's Drag to the swinging saxophone-and-piano theme of Nightmare. Witches Lament, amidst electronic burbles and operatic trills, could have become a gothic suite of colossal dimensions, but the duo does not dare to go that far.