For a brief period from 2004 to 2006, it seemed like I was discovering some weird new black metal band every other day. Indeed, bands like Nuit Noire, Circle of Ouroborus, Urfaust and Woods of Infinity were blowing my mind with their uniquely bizarre takes on the genre, but none of them prepared me for Lifelover’s astonishingly twisted debut album, Pulver.
Released in July of 2006 on cult independent label GoatowaRex, Lifelover’s first full-length is a descent into the deepest depths of depression. As someone who has suffered from depression throughout most of my life, the album drew me into its pitch black confines almost immediately. It’s combination of uneasiness, manic energy and overwhelming melancholy spoke to me in a way that very few albums have before or since, even though I didn’t understand the Swedish lyrics.
You see, I didn’t need lyrics to identify with vocalist Kim Carlsson. This is because his work on Pulver is one of the most harrowing performances in black metal this side of Silencer’s Death – Pierce Me. Carlsson’s singing gave a voice to how I often felt inside back then, language barrier be damned; it was and still is a listening experience that’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.
Of course, great vocals need great songs and Pulver is jam-packed with them. Owing as much to gothic rock and post punk as it does to black metal, tracks such as “M/S Salmonella” “Vardagsnytt” and “Sondagg” are dark as the dungeon, but they’re also strangely catchy. By taking their depressive black metal foundation and incorporating complimentary outside influences, Lifelover created a sound so utterly singular that to this day it has never been duplicated; I can’t think of a single band that’s even so much as tried.
All of this makes for an album that you don’t just listen to; you experience. Pulver is a record best experienced alone, in a dark room with a good pair of headphones, so as to fully immerse oneself in its infinite layers of despair. The production is lo-fi, which makes for a very interesting listen from a textural standpoint; guitars range from clean/acoustic to a fuzzy distortion that creeps around the edges of the songs, while the vocals take many forms, be they agonized screams, spoken word monologues, or strange, incoherent mutterings, sometimes with reverb or echo effects added. A piano is often incorporated, its sad melodies pulling at the heart strings to the point of agony. All of this is propelled by the simplistic beats of a drum machine; surprisingly, the canned drums do not in any way detract from the listening experience and in fact they more often than not enhance the bleakness Pulver so effortlessly conveys throughout its forty-two minute run-time.
Lifelover would go on to release three more albums before breaking up in 2011 due to multi-instrumentalist and main songwriter Jonas Bergqvist’s (credited on Lifelover releases as B) untimely passing due to an accidental prescription drug overdose that same year; a tragic end to one of the most unique and idiosyncratic bands to ever emerge from the Swedish black metal scene. Lifelover may have ended prematurely, but thanks to Pulver they’ll always have a place in both my head and my heart as one of the bands that got me through some pretty rough times mental health-wise and forever changed the way I thought about black metal in the process.
First thing’s first; yes, realize that Thrall-Demonsweatlive is an EP not an album. But it deserves a place in the top one hundred because it marks the beginning of my life-long obsession with all things Danzig. Like many Danzig fans in my age bracket, I was mesmerized by the video for “Mother ’93,” a clip mainly comprised of footage from the band’s legendary 1992 Halloween performance at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater; the image of Chuck Biscuits’ 15 foot high skull drum riser is permanently burned into my brain. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that “Mother” is a fantastic song, but combining it with the imagery of a rowdy-as-fuck live show took it to a whole other level.
One of the more interesting developments in the underground over the past half-decade or so is the renewed interest in dungeon synth. This was no doubt brought on by the rise of Dutch practitioner Old Tower, who released the excellent Stellary Wisdom this year on Profound Lore, as well as the recent reissues of Mortiis’ early works, coupled with his recent tours focused strictly on this “era one” material as opposed to his current industrial rock/metal incarnation.
I had an intro written and ready to go, reflecting on all the good and bad that heavy music in 2015 had to offer (mostly bad), but then I remembered that no one reads these long-winded, pointless intros. So, without further ado, here are eleven musical things (not just albums) that grabbed a hold of my crank and kept on yanking in 2015…
Last year, Gainesville, FL’s Ars Phoenix put out one of the best darkwave albums I’ve heard in quite some time in the form of Violent Rain, a release that combined robotic synths with an icy, sinister vibe to create a delightfully dark yet catchy and at times even danceable take on the genre. I revisit the album often, so I was quite excited when the band e-mailed to inform me that they had some new material out in the form of a split with fellow Floridians Burnt Hair titled Shinju (“double suicide” in Japanese).
As a reviewer, tons of releases come across my desk every year, but few of them actually make me stop and say “Wow, this album is really something.” Burial Hex’s The Hierophant is just such an album; its seamless mixture of disparate tones and textures is simply unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Please believe it when I say this is not another case of music journalist hyperbole, this is simply one of the most stunningly unique, beautiful and unsettling recordings ever to ravage my unworthy ears.
How in the blue hell did I manage to get even this far into the THKD Top 100 without covering a Danzig album?! Granted, the list is in no particular order, but given my Danzig super-fan status, you’d think I would’ve touched on one of the man’s records within the first few posts. The bands/artists you love the most are always the most difficult to write about and let’s face it, I’ve already devoted a fairly exhaustive amount of digital ink to the goddamn mighty GD (here, here, here, here… need I go on?). What’s left to say about my love for the man and his music at this point?
Underground metal is a land of extremes. Bands playing so fast that a human drummer can’t keep up, bands playing so slow they make a glacier look speedy, bands trying to play the heaviest, the most technical, the most brutal, the most… ah, fuck it, you get the idea. What I’m attempting to get at is, there’s typically no such thing as subtlety in the circles we travel in. This is what makes Emptiness’ Nothing but the Whole such a refreshing album. Where other bands seek to crush your soul in the first thirty seconds, Emptiness would rather watch it slowly wither and die.
I’ve long had a thing for the gothic/darkwave sound, and although I don’t seek it out as rabidly as I do metal, some great bands in this style have been coming my way of late. Last year saw Ghost Noise releasing a promising debut album and the past few months have been all about Bad Psychic’s stunningly beautiful Soon. Now we have Gainesville, FL trio Ars Phoenix gracing us with yet another must-hear take on the genre in the form of Violent Rain.
It’s been a little while since we last heard from Sygil Records, in fact it’s been just over a year since I reviewed one of their releases (Charnel House’s excellent Black Blood). I’m pleased to say that after an all-too-lengthy silence, the label is back with yet another recording that challenges our perceptions of what dark and heavy music can be. That recording is Soon, the debut full length from Bloomington, Indiana’s Bad Psychic.
When I first started thinking about how to approach THKD’s year end shenanigans for 2013, I tried to come up with ideas for different types of lists that would get away from the traditional top albums countdown. Turns out I’m more scatterbrained than creative, because what I ended up with was a bunch of stuff that really didn’t fit together or adhere to any sort of unifying theme. Instead of giving up on the idea, I decided to gather a few of these things together under one banner even though it didn’t make any sense whatsoever, just for the sheer joy of it, in addition to a more traditional year end list. So here it is, the second year end “bonus list” prior to the top metal albums countdown, which will be published on 12/13/13; THKD’s top 10 random-ass things I enjoyed in 2013. Continue reading “THKD’s top 10 Random-ass things I enjoyed in 2013”
According to my calendar, Winter doesn’t start until December 21st. I call bullshit. It’s dark when I get up to go to work in the morning, it’s dark when I get home from work and it’s freezing out. It’s fucking Winter. When this time of year rolls around, all I want to do is eat, sleep and listen to depressing music. I’m not allowed to hibernate, so I cope with the darkness of the season by listening to music that’s equally dark. Not wanting to keep the displeasure all to myself, I’ve selected ten of the most depressing albums in my Winter rotation to harsh your mellow and keep you appropriately bummed out until Spring rolls around… if you make it that long.
2012 has been more stressful than a motherfucker; probably one of the most all-around stressful years of my life. Buying a house + assorted family and work-related issues that I wouldn’t even dream of getting into here managed to turn the year into a goddamn pressure-cooker. I’m pretty sure the only things that kept me alive were my wife’s unwavering love (and limitless patience) and an avalanche of incredible music. In 2011 I was feeling pretty jaded and dissatisfied with the state of heavy metal, this year I found myself feeling better about things than I have in years. That isn’t to say there weren’t great albums released in 2011, there were, but in 2012 I felt like there was so much greatness that I couldn’t possibly keep up with it all.
In a recent conversation about music, my wife pointed out that I tend to gravitate towards stuff that is very raw and simplistic. I believe “garagey” was the term she used. She’s absolutely right. I guess this has long been the case, but I had never really thought about it consciously until she brought it up. I mean, I’ve certainly done my fair share of writing and espousing the virtues of raw, primitive music, but I never really considered just how much my listening preferences are dominated by these characteristics. Continue reading “Blitzkrieg #8: Oooh Baby I Like it Raw (from the Trashmen to Transilvanian Hunger)”
It’s taken me quite a while to wrap my head around Morne’s Asylum. I’ve been listening to it off and on for a little over a month now and I’m still not sure I fully comprehend the band’s intent. But I’d like to think that I come a little closer every time I put the album on. I recently found a quote by Victor Hugo that makes me think I might be on the right track.
As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.
Metal is often grotesque. So many metal subgenres revel in ghoulish imagery, content to wallow in their own filth, espousing the virtues of death and decay. But heavy metal can also be sublime. Nowhere is this more evident than on Asylum, a recording that can best be described as a search for the sublime through heaviness. It’s the kind of album I want to get lost in, to totally immerse myself in its mesmerizing sonic realm.
It’s something about the guitar tone. Milosz Gassan and Jeff Hayward somehow channel ghosts through their amplifiers, pushing air that crackles with spectral electricity. The unearthly distortion comes in waves, crashing against the rhythms before crumbling into the aether ever so slowly, leaving phantom trails in its wake. The effect is haunting. I find myself thinking about it long after the album is finished, like faded memories of past lives.
As hypnotic as those guitars might be, they aren’t the only key component of Morne’s audial alchemy. A layer of keyboards lingers just below the surface, an oh-so-subtle embellishment to Asylum‘s wraithlike atmosphere. There’s more than a bit of the Peaceville Three in those keys, lending the music a stately, gothic quality. Gassan’s hoarse, bellowing vocals recall both post metal and the crustier side of hardcore, adding a touch of grit and aggression to Morne’s otherwise heavy-yet-ethereal approach. Simple, propulsive drumming keeps the rest of the band anchored to the Earth, while the bass guitar rumbles away like thunder muffled by thick windowpanes.
Ultimately, Asylum is like a flower, slowly coming into bloom to reveal untold beauty, only to wither away and die, its wilted petals scattered to the four winds. Over the course of the album’s hour long duration, Morne proves that heaviness can be a means for achieving an end other than the grotesque. Whether or not they have truly achieved the sublime is up to the individual listener.
I have some pretty strange thoughts while listening to metal. I try to share as many of them as I can here at THKD. I often wonder if anyone else has a thought process that is even remotely similar, and occasionally I’m validated via the comments section. This time around however, I think I’ve come up with something that will throw at least 99.999% of you for a loop. When I started digging deeply into long lost NWOBHM band Hell’s debut album Human Remains, there was one downright bizarre thought I just couldn’t shake. I thought of Sir Laurence Olivier.
I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days. – From Shakespeare’s Richard III
Before you send the men in white coats to take me way, take a moment to compare the two videos above. The first one is Hell’s video for the track “On Earth as it is in Hell” and the second is Olivier’s opening monologue from the 1955 film version of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Wondering what a dead Shakespearean actor and a heavy metal band have in common? The answer is simple. Drama. Hell vocalist David Bower brings it to Human Remains in much the same way that Olivier brought it to the silver screen. Not many metal vocalists possess a true flare for the dramatic that can be translated into a compelling performance. King Diamond, Rob Halford, ’60s/’70s Sabbath-era Ozzy and a handful of others can do it. Most can’t.
You see, Mr. Bower has something in common w/ Olivier (aside from being British, of course). Bower is a classically trained actor and he brings that theatrical experience to Human Remains. As far as I can tell from researching Hell, this is Bower’s first time fronting a metal band (stepping in for the dearly departed David Halliday). To listen to his performance, you’d think he had been doing this for decades. Like Olivier’s portrayal of Richard III‘s title character, Bower’s vocal performance on Human Remains is suitably dark and sinister, but also extremely varied and complex. When was the last time you heard a metal singer bringing such a nuanced and refreshing approach to vocals? Surprisingly, Bower’s lack of a traditional metal musician’s background is a huge advantage, as he brings a skill set and influences to the table that might as well be from another galaxy, imparting Hell w/ a unique vocal identity (it should be noted that I have yet to hear the nearly three decade old(!) Hell demo/EP material that Human Remains is based on, so I have no idea how Bower’s vocals compare to Halliday’s).
For selling my divinity a blackened angel I shall be – From Hell’s “Blasphemy and the Master”
By now some of you have probably watched the two videos and have come to the conclusion that both performances are a little on the over-the-top side. This is because as both metal fans and consumers of popular culture, we are inundated with mediocre and downright bad vocalists and actors. The fact that both Tim “Ripper” Owens and Ben Affleck have had successful careers speak volumes to this theory. We are so used to seeing lifeless actors limp through their films and hearing metal vocalists who bring absolutely nothing new to the table that we’ve become complacent, labeling anything extraordinary or even moderately outside the norm as OTT or “cheesy” as a result. Some extraordinary metal vocalists, such as King Diamond, get a pass due to their longevity, but one can’t help but get the feeling that if King Diamond had debuted in 2011 instead of 1982, he would be mercilessly derided for his approach. Back on topic, notice how Olivier effortlessly, alters the tone, cadence, volume and intensity of his voice throughout the Richard III monologue with a fluidity that is seldom seen in modern film. This is not OTT, this is real acting, a commanding performance that holds you in its grip. The same can be said of Bower’s vocals. He employs a nearly identical technique, adjusting his approach to suit the musical/lyrical peaks and valleys of Human Remains, making each song a compelling narrative. In other words, he sings his ass off and you had better pay attention.
It isn’t just Bower’s powerful presence that imbues Human Remains with an innate sense of the theatrical. The compositions themselves (including a song based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which also speaks volumes about Hell’s bizarro connection to classical theatre) are mini roller coaster rides, thanks to the dual-guitar pyrotechnics of original Hell guitarist Kev Bower and uber-producer Andy Sneap (who was also behind the boards for the album). Their stellar six-string work can best be described as “NWOBHM on steroids”, thanks to Sneap’s muscular production scheme, but the riffage is tempered with a progressive edge that sets Hell apart from the trad metal pack. There is also a subtle gothic/symphonic atmosphere that permeates Human Remains, thanks to the restrained, tasteful use of keyboards and eerie backing vocals (It’s interesting to note here that the majority of songs on Human Remains predate debut albums by the likes of Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir by over a decade). If we’re sticking with the film/play metaphor and Bower’s vocals are the “star” of Human Remains, then it is easy to think of the music as the “supporting cast”. But make no mistake, the work of the rest of the band, as well as the quality of the songs themselves deserve equal billing, and it would be just as easy to compare Hell’s songwriting to Olivier’s mercurial performance.
If you’ve gotten this far through my rant, I’m guessing you’ve either come around to my way of thinking, or your concerns for my sanity have been fully justified. Obviously, I’m no theatre/film expert, so if any of you can expand upon or even refute my theories, I’d love to hear about it. What I do know is that just as Shakespeare is the quintessential British dramatist, so too is there something distinctly British about Human Remains, a stately yet headbanging quality that only British bands seem to fully possess (see: Cathedral, early CoF, the “Peaceville Three”, Maiden, Priest, et al.). You might call it “civilized frenzy”. It’s part Shakespearean tragedy, part Hammer Films gothic horror and part Black Sabbath-styled heaviness, and it bloody well works.
Even if you are ready to have me committed, I think we can all agree that Human Remains is one of the year’s most compelling and above all fun metal debuts. The fact that these guys were able to pull themselves out of the pits of obscurity after a twenty-five year layoff and release an album of this caliber is damn near mind-blowing. It will be interesting to see where they go from here and whether or not they can branch out beyond those ancient demos. Will they try to incorporate more “modern” influences? Will Bower alter his vocal approach as he continues to gain experience? Regardless of Hell’s next move, the bar has officially been set for traditional metal in 2011. Welcome back.
Pictured above is one Harold Camping. Creepy looking old fucker, eh? Mr. Camping is the California-based Christian radio broadcaster who started all this Rapture nonsense that we’ve been hearing so much about lately. May 21st, 2011, Camping’s predicted date for when the proverbial shit would hit the fan, has come and gone without any signs of God’s wrath. Turns out the crazy old coot also predicted the end of the world for September 7th, 1994 and has now revised his most recent epic fail for October 21st, 2011 (probably so he could swindle more suckers out of their life savings over the next five months). Give me a fucking break. Nonetheless, it got me thinking, if any of this poppycock were true, what metal albums would I put in heavy rotation in order to ring in the Beginning of The End? After some deliberation and debate standing in front of my CD rack, I chose the following four albums as the soundtrack to the impending Twilight of the Idols.
VON – Satanic Blood Angel (Nuclear War Now! Productions)
San Francisco’s VON only recorded a handful of material during their brief original incarnation, but that material, collected on Satanic Blood Angel, is encoded in the malformed DNA of black metal as we know it. The hypnotic repetition, lo-fi recording quality and themes of Satanism create a blueprint for the genre that is continually being copied, re-shaped and built upon to this day. Black metal is an inherently apocalyptic form of music, so including one of the fountainheads from which the genre sprang is a must for any Armageddon festivities. Unlike a lot of other black metal, VON’s recordings sound genuinely frightening and ritualistic without being comically over-the-top. This is raw, grim ‘n’ gritty stuff that just might be a field recording from the depths of hell, the invocation that begins our march towards oblivion. Pray Satan. Pray Satan. Pray Satan.
Triptykon – Eparistera Daimones (Century Media/Prowling Death)
Tom G. Warrior has been working on crafting the perfect soundtrack to the End of Days for almost three decades. He came close on multiple occasions with Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, but his vision seems to have reached a climax with Triptykon’s Eparistera Daimones. A lurching, heaving leviathan of an album, the Earth shudders under the sheer suffocating heaviness of tracks such as “Abyss Within My Soul” and “Myopic Empire”. Warrior refers to his lyrics as “epistles” (a term typically referring to parts of the Christian Bible’s New Testament which were written as letters to groups of people, i.e. First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, etc), but if anything they are sermons for black masses to be celebrated during the Tribulation. Eparistera Daimones is an utterly draining listen, physically and especially mentally. Prolonged exposure to its haunting blackness could ultimately lead to complete and total erosion of the soul, which might be the only respite from Hell on Earth.
1349 – Revelations of the Black Flame (Candlelight)
For Revelations of the Black Flame, Norway’s 1349 largely abandoned their monotonous, blasting brand of black metal in favor of noise and ambience, creating an utterly polarizing album in the process. Once the initial shock wears off though, the soundscapes 1349 conjure here slowly begin to seep out of the speakers and infest your ears, worming their way into your soul. It’s none too surprising that Tom G. Warrior also had a hand in the recording, as the claustrophobic blackness here is very similar to that of Triptykon and latter-day Celtic Frost, although the material on Revelations… is much more adventurous in its execution. It’s no mere coincidence that Revelation is the hallucinatory book of the New Testament in which the Apostle John describes the Apocalypse, because while some call this album 1349’s nadir, I call it their first (and so far only) foray into a sound that is utterly deranged, horrific and esoteric, a perfectly sublime sonic accompaniment to Ragnarok if ever there was one.
Godflesh – Streetcleaner (Earache)
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” The quotation is from George Orwell’s 1984, but it perfectly sums up Godflesh’s 1989 debut album, the monolithically heavy Streetcleaner. The recording is the equivalent of having your skull marched over by a thousand dirt and blood-caked mechanical boots, while visions of a world irrevocably scarred by over-population, urban blight, unchecked greed and absolute power corrupting absolutely run through it. The crushing, metronomic pulse of the drum machine gives the album a soulless, mechanical vibe, while the grimy distortion of the guitar and bass, as well as Justin Broadrick’s beastly vocals, are undeniably human; the sounds of mankind struggling against the onset of subjugation via technology, only to be crushed under its aforementioned heel. Regular readers will remember that I recently used almost identical imagery to describe a trio of forward thinking Norwegian black metal albums. Streetcleaner is a direct precursor to those recordings and its apocalyptic visions are far more terrifying than any hellfire ‘n’ brimstone sermon, precisely because it is rooted in the all too tangible realities of our everyday world.
Of course the sad thing is that twenty or thirty years ago, before the of the internet, social networking and all the other platforms we now have in place for wackadoos to advertise their messages of moronitude (yes, I made that word up) across the globe, Harold Camping would only be known as California radio’s local nutcase for Christ. Articles such as this one wouldn’t be necessary because Camping would be a regional footnote at best. But regardless of what you think of faux-doomsday prophecies and whether or not the universe implodes, I think you’ll find these four albums well worth your time (though hopefully you’ve already explored at least some of them). If nothing else, they prove that Satan has the best tunes, even on Judgement Day.
In honor of Halloween, I thought I would take a moment to divert from the regularly scheduled THKD programming. Do not attempt to adjust your monitor. I control the horizontal. I control the vertical. Now that I have your undivided attention, I want to take a moment to a talk a little about a band known as the Misfits.
For me, the Misfits are synonymous with the Halloween season and are one of my all-time favorite bands. My reputation as a Glenn Danzig fanboy is well documented. But what might not be so well-documented is that the Misfits represent my favorite phase of the man’s career. Like many folks from my generation, I was introduced to them thanks to Metallica’s “Last Caress/Green Hell” cover. That was a great version, but nothing compared to when I heard the Misfits playing their own songs for the first time. Mind officially blown. It was as if someone combined everything I loved about music into one band, and then added a visual and lyrical aesthetic that represented everything I loved about vintage horror and science fiction films. I remember buying Collection I and listening to it over and over and over again in junior high (especially “Where Eagles Dare”!). Back then, information on the Misfits was scarce (at least in the Midwest), and since Danzig famously hated talking about the band at that time (no doubt due to the legal bullshit going on between him and Only), I could only speculate about the band’s origins. I was so fucking excited to find a Misfits shirt (XL and baggy as all hell on my tall scrawny frame, just how I liked it) at my local record store, before the band’s “Crimson Ghost” logo became ubiquitous. I wore that thing until it disintegrated.
Very few bands are perfect. The Misfits were one of them. I’m not talking about the Jerry Only-fronted abomination that parades around today calling itself the Misfits. I’m talking about the band as it existed from 1977 to 1983. From songs to style to imagery, the Misfits had it all, an often duplicated but never equalled head-on collision of punk rock filth, ’50s rock catchiness and melody, gothic atmosphere and too much horror business. Glenn Danzig’s lyrics were a heady blend of twisted pop culture references, nihilism and misogyny. His backing band, consisting of bassist Jerry Only, a range of guitarists that included Only’s brother Doyle, Bobby Steele and Franche Coma, and a revolving door of drummers that put Spinal Tap to shame, created a sound that was unlike anything I’ve heard before or since. The fact that stories of alleged grave-robbing and excessive violence (the song “London Dungeon” was supposedly the result of Danzig and Steele spending the night in an English jail after a punch up with some skinheads) were part of the Misfits mythos made them even more intriguing, if such a thing were possible.
The Misfits took the innocence of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll and forever corrupted it. They bathed Elvis Presley in the blood, brains and skull fragments of the Kennedy assassination. Punk rock was founded on speeding up and ripping off Chuck Berry and Scotty Moore riffs, but the Misfits brought a darkness and foreboding to the style in the same way that Black Sabbath brought it to the blues in the early ’70s. They were also better song-writers than any other punk band ever, writing some of the flat-out catchiest choruses ever put to tape (“I ain’t no goddamn son of a bitch, you better think about it baby!”, “Sweet lovely death, I am waiting for your breath…”, etc.). But the band’s real area of expertise is what I refer to as “the whoah-whoah part”. The whoah-whoah part crops up in numerous Misfits songs (“Mephisto Waltz”, “I Turned into a Martian”, “Astro Zombies” and “Some Kinda Hate” to name just a few.) and is the single most infectious aspect of the band’s playbook. The level of craftsmanship the Misfits displayed was so far ahead of the curve in every aspect; it’s a fucking travesty that they continue to be left out of the punk rock history books.
The Misfits might not get the respect they deserve, but that’s beside the point. The fact that they have influenced everything from thrash to black metal to gothic rock to doom says a lot more about the band than some jag-off rock critic who refuses to acknowledge their greatness. For me personally, a lot of bands have come and gone over the years, but the Misfits sound just as exciting, vital and visceral today as they did when I heard them for the first time in 7th grade. They are total fucking anarchy by way of an alien invasion/zombie outbreak, lead by the reanimated corpses of Vampira and Marilyn Monroe. They are the soundtrack to an Autumn filled with “brown leaf vertigo / where skeletal life is known”. They are the Misfits. Beware.
THKD 