Due to a recent day-job grind and a very late night spent in the company of Agalloch (a show that’s in my future as I type this and in your past as you read it, but which I have no doubt will be/was awesome), I am leeching off the work of other writers for today’s first two posts rather than creating the kind of brilliant original content for which NCS is known far and wide, by which I mean from Seattle all the way to Tacoma.
This first piece of leeching sucks the creative blood from Full Metal Attorney, whose blood we have figuratively sucked in previous posts as well. As you may recall from our previous leeching, FMA has been running posts celebrating the 20th anniversary of iconic metal albums. Today, he has posted one about the third album by Danzig, How the Gods Kill (its 20th anniversary is actually tomorrow, but FMA doesn’t post on Saturday’s).
FMA calls Danzig III “one of the most cocksure, diabolical metal albums of all time”, an album that saw Danzig “following a devil on the left down the path to rock and roll perfection”. Not only does he view Danzig III as the apex of the band’s musical career, he contends it’s a collection of music that, twenty years later, “hasn’t shown its age in the slightest.”
I don’t know whether these are controversial statements because, for me, Danzig wasn’t a pivotal band in my own road toward metal hell, and I’ve never listened to all of the albums. But I’ll say this: “Dirty Black Summer” is a hell of a song, and the H.R. Giger artwork for Danzig III is completely killer.
The artwork, by the way, wasn’t created by Giger for the album, though it was used with his consent. It was a pre-existing 1976 painting called Meister und Margeritha. For reasons that will become obvious when you see the painting (here), the full version didn’t appear on the album in unmodified form.
To return to the music, I’m definitely not in the mood to quarrel with this FMA post as I did the one he wrote about the 20th anniversary of King Diamond’s Abigail. I have good memories of the songs I heard when Danzig III came out, and I’ve had fun this afternoon going back to the ones I remember — especially “Dirty Black Summer”.
So with that, I’m hoping we’ll get some discussion in the comments. Do you agree or disagree with Full Metal Attorney’s assessment of this album? Did Danzig mean anything to you in your formative metal years? Do you think Danzig III has stood the test of time, without showing its age?
Check out FMA’s post here, and then come on back and share your thoughts if the spirit moves you.
6 Responses to “THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF DANZIG III IS UPON US”
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Nice write-up. I don’t have any idea if my opinions on it are controversial or not, though when I mentioned it briefly on Grind and Punishment once they, at least, thought I was crazy for preferring it over the debut.
Saw Danzig live in Upstate NY in May of last year. Even in his old age, he put on a hell of a show and his voice sounded great.
I even got to chat with him for a moment after the show. All you read about online is how much of a douchebag he is, but he seemed genuinely cool to me.
I don’t know if I’d agree that it hasn’t shown it’s age…but that was a great song. (“Dirty Black Summer,” I mean.)
I would presume that I am in something of a minority in preferring Herr Danzig’s work with Misfits over anything in his solo catalog.
Nope.
Well, WE might be something of a minority, but I definitely preferred his horrorpunk days over his evil Elvis days.