Danzig: Deth Red Sabaoth – new album

One has to make an effort and return from relative cyber-obscurity for ‘Deth Red Sabaoth’, ninth studio album by American heavy metal legends DANZIG, which is to be released tomorrow, June 22nd, 2010 (22. 6. 2010) through Evilive and The End Records. The album was produced by the man, Glenn Danzig, himself and is the first release of new material by the band in six years. The current band line-up consists of frontman Glenn Danzig (who also recorded most of the bass tracks and played drums on the song ‘Black Candy’), Johnny Kelly on drums, Steve Zing on bass and Tommy Victor on lead guitar. Album artwork was designed by award-winning comics artist Joe Chiodo.

DANZIG - the band, was founded by musician, singer, songwriter, author, entrepreneur, father of horror punk and godfather of dark metal, founder of MISFITS, SAMHAIN and DANZIG band, owner of Evilive record label and Verotic (adult comics publishing company) and celebrated baritone - Glenn Danzig in 1987, New Jersey, USA. He gathered some heavy weights of the time, namely his great friend Eerie Von (MISFITS) – bass, John Christ (SAMHAIN) – guitar and Chuck Biscuits on drums, to form DANZIG, the band. In 1988, self-titled debut album was released through Def American Recording. ‘Danzig’ remains the band's best-selling full-length and was certified gold in United States in 1994 and re-released by American Recordings label in 1998. In 1990 the band released - my personal favorite - ‘Danzig II: Lucifuge’. This album is considered to be DANZIG's most diverse; blurring lines between classic blues and hard rock. As with the previous album, the distributors - Geffen Records - refused to put its name on the packaging due to the nature of the music (love, sex, evil, religious themes and inverted crosses). The album was reissued in 1998. Glenn Danzig co-produced the following album, ‘Danzig III: How The Gods Kill’, along with the band's long time producer, Rick Rubin. The album cover is the 1976 painting called “Master and Margarita” by famous Swiss surrealist painter H.R. Giger (the man who showed us how the really nasty “Aliens” look like ) who modified the original painting slightly, covering “the Master's” erect penis with a dagger bearing his interpretation of the Danzig's skull mascot. Steve Huey of Allmusic argued it to be “the definitive DANZIG album”. The band released an EP entitled ‘Thrall: Demonsweatlive’ in 1993. DANZIG got the watered-down version of the video ‘Mother’ finally played on MTV, putting them into the mainstream; such spotlight got Glenn Danzig into into no end of trouble with religious groups accusing him of being Satanist. He answered their accusations with the following words: “We welcome their disdain.” 1994's album ‘Danzig IV’ is the last to feature the original line-up: “The music here comes the closest to reflecting the darkness of Glenn Danzig's lyrics” commented Steve Huey, AllMusic. With the “classic DANZIG era” being over, their fifth album, ‘Danzig V: Blackacidevil’ - released in 1996 via Hollywood Records and re-released by E-Magine Records in 2000 – was, style-wise, harder, edgier and industrial-sounding. In 1999, ‘6:66 Satan’s Child’ was released to mixed reactions by critics and fans alike. Seventh studio effort entitled ‘Danzig 777: I Luciferi’ was released in 2002 by Danzig's Evilive label and distributed by Spitfire Records. It was received with great relief by many of band's fans, marking the return to DANZIG's music roots: “A quite listenable and welcome return to truly metallic form for Glenn Danzig, who, for the most part, successfully aims for the gray area between truly menacing evil and nudge-nudge wink-wink dark humor - something conveyed best on early DANZIG material.” - John Serba, AllMusic. ‘Circle Of Snakes’ was produced and released by Glenn Danzig himself in 2004. ‘The Lost Tracks Of Danzig’, a compilation album of previously unreleased tracks, was released via Megaforce Records in 2007.

Follow-up: AOL's Noiscreep has premiered DANZIG's new video for the song ‘On A Wicked Night’, taken from the new album ‘Deth Red Sabaoth’. The album that was nearly two years in making was produced by Glenn Danzig himself, taking analog approach to recording: “I wanted to have an organic sound, bigger and thicker, so I went out and bought some 1970s Kustom tuck ’n’ roll bass amps to play some of the guitar parts through. You’ll hear real reverb, real tremolo on this album, which sounds completely different than the stuff that's done with computer chips.” The album features appearances by TYPE O NEGATIVE/SEVENTH VOID drummer Johnny Kelly and PRONG's guitarist Tommy Victor. ‘Deth Red Sabaoth’ became DANZIG's highest-charting album since the release of ‘Danzig 4p’ in 1994. It sold 11,700 copies in the US in its first week of release and landed at number 35 on the Billboard 200. In Europe the album debuted at number 26 on Finnish Albums Chart and made it to positions 45 and 48 in Sweden and Germany, respectively.

Noisecreep's Amy Sciarretto wrote a wonderful review of the record for Ultimate-Guitar: “Glenn's signature voice doesn't deviate from what it does best and that is really what we all need and want it to do. His low, ominous and ultimately soulful vocalizations about demonically inclined subjects are here and appreciated as usual. So I issue this challenge, on behalf of Glenn Danzig. Head out to your car and turn this music on. Blare it from your stereo. As loud as you can. It does not matter if you use an actual CD or an iPod adapter. Now hit the road and see if your ride doesn't feel if it's going to fall apart from the bolts from the sheer power that is omnipresent on ‘Deth Red Sabaoth’. The low end boom of the rhythm section is certainly complemented by Glenn's from-the-depths-of-his gut style of singing. His voice is truly showcased on ‘On A Wicked Night’; it feels slightly processed and sails over a simple but dream-haunting acoustic riff.” Read the rest of it here.   

Follow-up: ‘Ju Ju Bone’, the new video from DANZIG released in May 2011, can be viewed below (courtesy of ARTISTdirect.com). The eerie, visually stunning clip, full of red and black tones, was co-directed by Glenn Danzig and John Osteen, who is also the director of the horror cult classic “Black Devil Doll”.