Would you be overly surprised if I told you that this was kind -of a dark blues-based hardrock? Yessir, Danzig really brought in a whole sleeve of influences for this album, such as whatever his influences were on the previous three albums, and nothing more.
Ok, so I’m being unfair, as this album was a small step away from the tried-and-true formula of the first three Danzig albums, mainly thanks to smacking various buttons in the studio rather than any real musical exploration. But hey, why fix something that’s not broken? Danzig must’ve found a reason, since the album that followed this had a huge change in style and was godawful.
While How The Gods Kill stands as my favorite Danzig release, this album lurks ever so closely behind and is even darker and more brooding! Sure, there’s still the hardrocking numbers such as ’’Bringer of Death’’, but there’s a lot of more atmospheric songs like ’’Little Whip’’ and ’’Stalker Song’’, and boy does the ol’ muffinman know how to do those well by now.
And just to show that he’s ever so experimental, there is a mood piece called ’’Sadistikal’’, which grows old very fast. Overall I’d say it’s a more sedate album than the previous albums, but a few songs are thrown in to show that these guys aren’t about to head in a smooth jazz direction. There are, as always, a couple of songs that aren’t quite up to the album’s standard, but I’ll easily let them pass since they thankfully don’t drag down the overall impact of the album all that much.
Unfortunately the entire band left shortly after recording this album, except Danzig, of course. A Danzig-less Danzig would be hilarious, though. Anyways, after this album he decided to try exciting new things and chuck anything resembling good songwriting out of the window. D’oh.
I recommend this to anyone who already have How the Gods Kill and quite enjoy that, but also to those who’ve heard some Danzig, liked it, but would maybe like something that’s a bit more moody and doesn’t bring up too many associations with spandex and beer muscles.