Punk Record Reviews

To some people, Kriegshog might represent “more awesome, insane Japanese noise-crust,” one among a series of bands like D-Clone, Death Dust Extractor, Hermit Prose, Total Noise Accord, Contrast Attitude, etc. This is not the case for me. With the exceptions of this band, and Framtid if they ever release more music, my interest in this music is dead. Just because I like Virgil, does not mean I have to like Lucan. My interest in Framtid and Disclose does not have to carry over to the detritus of cultural history that followed in their wake. 

Many people will want to point out that Kriegshog are “crazy.” What they ARE, however, is “simple.” That does not mean that these are just any riffs thrown together, hoping that you won’t notice because it is over so fast—not at all. It means that they are really laid bare, to stand or fall based on their utter obviousness. It is a classic joke of punk music that if you distort everything and play fast enough, no one will notice how out of tune or out of time you are: Kriegshog don’t risk this. Their music is simple in the classic tradition of hardcore. If you’ve ever tried covering a Raw Power or Agnostic Front song, you’ll see what I mean. 

The music, though, is not “minimalist” by any stretch; it is quite maximalist, in the Motorhead tradition. It is only that the sound is here comprised just as much by the style as is the case with, say, the Shitlickers. You just try sounding like the Shitlickers: it won’t take, because the thing with that band is entirely apart from just the striking *effect* they produce. Same with Kriegshog: a number of bands have been striving after the adjectives in play here, but that only leads to a kind of positivism. Again, not to overstate the greatness here, but it is the difference between what “Y2K Thrash” *was* and what it wanted to sound like. No one would ever confuse those later, retro bands with, say, Minor Threat or Impact or whatever, even though those bands were nothing but an amalgamation of these influences. Kriegshog don’t so much wear their influences on their sleeve as do, say, Framtid or Disclose (just to stay within this scene); but this means that comparisons are all the easier to make: one is not annoyingly confined to a PR-sheet written in advance by the band’s t-shirts on the album jacket.

The music, in case you’re wondering, is some combination of No Security, Framtid, and some palm-muted gallop (be it Metallica or Bastards). 

[Recommended.]

Since the Misfits broke up when I was only several months old, I rarely if ever got to see them perform live. By all accounts and historical documentation, however, they were a terrible live act. I’ve heard any number of live bootleg albums, and while these hold an inexhaustible thrill for me, you couldn’t really say that the Misfits were “tight” or even “competent.” They play too fast, they are out of tune, they take long breaks in between songs, Jerry crudely harasses the crowd, Glenn forgets to sing into the microphone, etc.

My favorite lineup is with two guitarists (Doyle and Bobby Steele) and Arthur Googy on drums. After Bobby left, the band recorded the Evilive EP (later expanded into an LP) as a four-piece. The versions of “All Hell Breaks Loose,” “20 Eyes,” and “Devil’s Whorehouse” from this performance are especially noteworthy. While the studio versions of these songs (on Walk Among Us) are murky and slow, and “Devil’s Whorehouse” in particular plagued by overdubs and weird spooky effects, these live versions are sparkling and ferocious. Some non-fans of the Misfits have objected to Danzig’s “crooning”—what they will find on this live record is much more raw and (decidedly) unpolished; they positively race through these songs, all of which are “built” for this approach (i.e. no fast versions of “Bullet” or “Last Caress,” which are less rhythmically suited to be torn through like this). The exception would be the bizarre “We Are 138,” with a “guest vocal” by Black Flag’s Henry Rollins—of whom we could say that he “doesn’t know the lyrics” if only 1) there were lyrics to this song, or 2) Henry weren’t the Misfits biggest fan and that were possible! So, who knows what is going on here! They absolutely butcher this simplest of songs, which leads me to my next point…

After Robo (from Black Flag) joins as a drummer, the live performances take a turn for the worse: everything is way too fast, all of the emphases and dynamics blur together, and the band becomes a roaring mess. There is a lot of video from this era, and it is just a cacophony + Danzig’s rushed melodies. If you squint, you can imagine that you are hearing a predecessor to the Jesus and Mary Chain, but instead of a swaggering cool, the vibe here is of a frustrated ineptitude. When you hear Glenn’s next band, Samhain, it is obvious why he broke up the Misfits: Samhain were extremely tight live; they could hold a groove, and the drumming never becomes a flickering thrash-beat.

The direction taken in Samhain stands therefore as a complete rejection of every tendency of the Earth AD album (recorded with Robo): “Queen Wasp,” “Green Hell,” “Devilock,” et al, just race by: the drums are just speedy tapping instead of the caveman-smashing-bones pounding of Samhain (“The Howl,” “The Shift,” “Unholy Passion”) or the rock professionalism of Arthur Googy.

Don’t get me wrong. Earth AD is one of my favorite records, but you can hear instantly why it did not translate live. There’s nothing to hold onto rhythmically, except in songs like “Bloodfeast” and “Death Comes Ripping” (which we know were originally slated for Samhain). And the tinny, thin recording is truly regrettable. To this day, although “everyone loves the Misfits,” songs like “Hellhound” and “Wolfsblood” remain deeply unappreciated—because Metallica didn’t cover these songs, because they don’t have “whoa-oh” choruses, because they are on the album’s side two… These songs are both tuneless rants, almost impossible to sing along with, and humorless. This is as far as Danzig gets from the “crooning” of “Last Caress.” But both songs are extremely taut, riveting, and absurdly brief—almost mere sketches.

Earth AD is a tough record to approach for a Misfits fan, not just because of the terrible sound or how the best part of the band (Danzig’s vocals) are mixed low, but because the songs have nothing Ramones-y or kitschy about them. “Death Comes Ripping” is a long, unpleasant distance from “Teenagers from Mars,” as the titles alone should indicate. I’ve always argued that this record has to be understood in its historical context, as being closer to Agnostic Front than to the Ramones; but I’ll be honest: the album doesn’t stand on its own (as AF’s Victim in Pain surely does). It’s too short, and the sound is too bad, and it disappoints all expectations for a fan of Walk Among Us. As a “departure” for the group, it doesn’t stick around long enough to justify itself, nor does it have a sonic personality or “key.” [When I first heard this album, it was on CD, and had appended the 3-song Die, Die, My Darling 12” single, which helped a great deal. Earth AD as it stands is almost a “hit”-free record.] It’s a slog. At the same time, underneath the muddiness and aggression, I think there is an excellent, nuanced, and furious hardcore album. The difficult line separating tunefulness from atonal bellowing and grinding is more successfully straddled here than perhaps anywhere else.

To conclude part 2: Whenever I am thinking about why the Misfits are better than every other post-Ramones American punk band, I like to imagine seeing them live—even though I have just finished saying what a MESS the band was live. In a previous post, I have bemoaned the gaping rift separating a band’s presentation (hype) from the factical mediocrity of their songs. What made the Ramones so great was that, within their stripped-down, blue-jeans-and-leather aesthetic, they crafted these incredible and imaginative anthems: the Ramones’ music was so much BIGGER than their image.

The Misfits easily could have looked like the biggest assholes ever. Imagine these New Jersey hicks walking into a tiny bar, their cheap equipment all painted black and goofily made to look “spooky.” Maybe they are wearing makeup and are dressed ridiculously, but then they are only playing to a couple hundred people. When KISS had fireworks and blood-spitting, at least they were playing arenas! But the Misfits are like the embarrassing peace punk band that has spent more time on the banner they are going to hang behind the drumkit than they have spent on their songs. Until they start playing. And then this ratty, cheap, not-entirely-cohesive group of nerds and losers, dressed like morons, burst into a set of songs so much bigger than life, that they don’t at all seem ridiculous anymore.

If you open up any music magazine today, or go to a punk show, every band is trying to set themselves apart with their image and their influences and their opinions and their back-story. All of this is a substitute or a prosthesis for the music itself, which has to be supplemented or supplanted in this way. (How many times has anyone ever told you about a “great new band” and then gone on to describe how their choruses work?)

The Misfits are the total opposite of this. Their image, ridiculous as it is, dissolves into their classic songs. There is a gap between their presentation and their song-craft, but it is the opposite of every mediocre band. The songs are so wonderful, that we don’t care that the Misfits looked like morons or that the recordings are sometimes almost unlistenably poor. Those choruses!

The fact that for many a fan the Misfits ARE only their image (“horror punk”) is just a sad testimony to how little interest music (as music) holds for people in general. At the same time, however, I don’t wish that the Misfits had been regular slobs or flannel-wearers: I love that they thought of themselves as entertainers. This is also true of the Sex Pistols (who are very much the successors to Monty Python) and the New York Dolls and has sadly vanished from punk today. We no longer expect to be entertained by musicians: we expect to be lectured, or impressed, or seen, or physically hurt by the “intensity” of the crowd, or to merely be at a “happening.” It’s sad that the Misfits are on one hand so universally popular, and on the other hand that their legacy (of writing great songs, of transcending their image instead of leaning upon it, of entertainment rather than cynicism) is nowhere to be found.

A few years ago (Halloween of 2004), I put out an issue of my zine that was entirely about the Misfits. In 2011, this band is as ubiquitous at ever: their logo has been used in Shepard Fairey street art, their t-shirt interchangeable is with a Motorhead t-shirt for a certain kind of photo shoot, the embarrassment of the Jerry Only-only Misfits is fading… So it is perhaps appropriate, in the midst of this inundation (which is at the same time an inuring), to remind my readers how weird and great and special the Misfits are.

To start, it’s worth reminding ourselves that the Misfits “fit” into our classic image of them only for a very short while. Their first single, “Cough Cool” (1977), is a guitarless art-wave dirge, not even a punk record. Their second album, Earth AD (1983), is a hardcore record very much in line with other hardcore of the time, such as the albums by Agnostic Front, Negative Approach, and Jerry’s Kids.

But this iconic version of the band, a kind of cartoon horror version of the Ramones—is belied at every turn. Let’s start with the era of the Static Age album. On one hand, there are the off-putting and distasteful lyrics to “Bullet” (a fantasy about being sexually serviced by Jackie O during her husband’s assassination) or the Oedipal complexes of “Last Caress.” This isn’t campy fun or kitsch. On the other hand, the songs that do fit the bill of 50s horror punk (“Teenagers from Mars,” “Return of the Fly,” “Hybrid Moments”) are easily outweighed by:

• the 5:00 of the lament “Come Back”
• the jazzy piano of “Theme for a Jackal”
• the straightforward KBD punk of “Attitude,” “Static Age,” and “Angelfuck”
• the inscrutable “We are 138”

I always think of the early Misfits as the greatest of the “KBD” bands, in an alternate universe—they are just so cool, even though they don’t have everything figured out. The sound and thematic material for which they would become famous, is only about 1/2 there. But it’s all super tuneful, the Ramones influence is huge, the band is super tight; great leather jacket punk, but with this interesting mystique.

The first single after the Static Age sessions is “Horror Business.” For two reasons I consider this the start of the classic era: 1) first use of the Crimson Ghost logo; 2) the A-side is basically narrating the plot of the Alfred Hitchcock movie “Psycho,” while the B-side includes “Teenagers from Mars,” indicating where the band was headed, lyrically—songs taken from horror movies. As usual, I feel that this leads to the underrating* of the non-horror song “Children in Heat,” with its great lyrics about “pissing blood for seven days.”

*: Most overrated Misfits songs: “Attitude” (covered by Guns ‘n Roses), “Hollywood Babylon,” “Teenagers from Mars,” and “Hatebreeders.”

The next single is “Night of the Living Dead”—another horror movie, another great song, but the B-side has probably the greatest chorus in early US punk, in “Where Eagles Dare”: “I ain’t no goddamn son of a bitch.” (“Where Eagles Dare” is, of course, a movie—but a 1960s ww2 movie along the lines of “The Dirty Dozen” or “Von Ryan’s Express.”) For me, this sort of song is more interesting than the horror movie summaries, which tend to be rather “objective,” because I am so interested in the Glenn Danzig persona: at once nerdy and Byronic, deeply insecure and yet defensively violent. The same thing can be seen in “Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?” but vanishes in the more comic-book violence of, say, “We Bite.”

3 Hits from Hell is probably my favorite Misfits release. “London Dungeon” has such a cool vibe, a great strutting riff, taunting lyrics which turn a (somewhat embarrassing) arrest on their English tour into these supernatural and wryly mocking lyrics. “Ghouls Night Out” is maybe their best song, and this is also their best-recorded material: the drums are really booming in a “Be My Baby” way; the bass sound is really raw and high in the mix; the extra guitar tracks beef up their usually thin sound. (The other songs from this session make up the “12 Hits from Hell” bootleg album; the same tracks are scattered over disc 3 of the Box Set.)

In conclusion to Part 1 of this post, let me say the following. In the early 2000s, when I was most involved in punk, but perhaps still today, THE band of early US punk was not the Misfits, not the Germs, not the Dead Kennedys, not X, not the Bad Brains… but Black Flag. This had the air of the inevitable about it, but I don’t really see why it should be so. The pretentiousness of Henry Rollins reading out of Henry Miller books before shows, the aggressive anti-audience posturing, the super-intense and macho psychological play-acting, the “eclectic” appropriations of bad hard rock and egregious filler—all of this was a very doubtful debt owed to Black Flag. Now, Black Flag were one of the greatest bands, but their influence on what has been called “Mysterious Guy hardcore” is almost uniformly unpleasant. The Bad Brains, at the very least AS great a band, had almost no presence qua influence during that time: of course there are other HORRIBLE aspects of the Bad Brains that rival the worst parts of Black Flag—true for all of these bands, really. The very thing that makes Black Flag or the Bad Brains interesting is also what makes them a non-uniform artistic experience, the opposite of the cookie-cutter “reading” and shallow emphases that they are treated to 20 years afterward.

What if the Misfits had been THAT influence, instead of Black Flag? Certainly the Misfits were not less popular… Would there have been a scene with songs recited in Latin? More wolfman penises on the cover of albums? More “objectivity” (as characterized Danzig’s movie songs) and less psychological gutter-hosing (as characterizes post-1984 Black Flag)? Certainly a different way of being macho and apolitical.

It’s an interesting alternate history we could write. What is certain: in fact, none of what I’ve just described would have been the influence selected by the scene, even though all of that is important to the full picture of the Misfits.

Instead we would have had the same retread of the band’s 3 or 4 most obvious characteristics—the very thing we deplore in the Jerry Only “new Misfits,” but seem unable to escape in our own listening habits.