When Static Age finally saw the light of day, in 1996, as part of The Misfits box set, it felt more like a time capsule being unearthed than a record release. By that point, singer Glenn Danzig had long since abandoned his corpse paint and so-called “horror punk” origins in search of bluesier, Black Sabbath-inspired pastures with Samhain and, ultimately, the eponymous Danzig. Bassist and co-founding member Jerry Only, on the other hand, found Jesus, as well as full-time work in his family’s machine shop, before converting his absurdly named Christian metal band Kryst the Conqueror into a new incarnation of Misfits in 1995, thanks to an out-of-court settlement with Danzig and the installation of a 19-year-old scab singer known as Michale Graves.
The long-overdue release of Static Age shed a painful light on the absurdity of having a kid not yet of drinking age sing Danzig’s lyrics about Patty Hearst, Vincent Price, and a Kenneth Anger book from the late 1950s. After all, the record’s thematic content was refracted through the hyper-specific lens of what a young Glenn Anzalone had watched on TV in the 1960s and 1970s, growing up across the river from New York City in the North Jersey suburbs. The 17 songs that would eventually comprise Static Age were recorded in 30 hours over the course of a few months in 1978, in a barter with Mercury over a trademark Danzig held. The result was a tight 35 minutes of catchy hardcore paired with Danzig’s rockabilly-inspired baritone vocals—what should have been Misfits’ scorching debut album, recorded a scant nine months after the band had formed. In a fairer world, Static Age would have been their breakout record, their London Calling or their Never Mind the Bollocks. Best laid plans and all.
The record ended up collecting dust on a shelf for almost 20 years, because no label would touch it. “We talked to Chrysalis Records, who were doing Blondie and Billy Idol, and they didn’t want it,” Only said in a 2015 interview. “We talked to Sire Records, who were doing the Ramones and Richard Hell, and they didn’t want it.” On paper, it’s easy to see why Misfits were a tough sell. The band’s fixation on horror B-movies and pre-Oliver Stone JFK conspiracy theories probably made them look remarkably less sophisticated, and, dare I say, less cool, than their cosmopolitan New York City punk peers. After all, Danzig was a grown-ass man singing lyrics like, “We’re teenagers from Mars/And we don’t care” and “Return of the fly/With Vincent Price/Yeah, return of the fly.” While the Ramones and Blondie were pushing gritty downtown glamour, Misfits embraced suburban ennui and built a campy aesthetic based on old black-and-white midnight monster movies. While Joey Ramone and Tom Verlaine were wispy, reedy, and slender, Danzig was a squat, solid fire hydrant of a man, and his similarly jacked bandmates resembled shop-class meatheads more likely to beat up high-school punks than start their own bands.
Although the majors turned up their nose at songs sung by a guy demonstrating a pronounced Elvis influence, about zombies from outer space, infanticide, and a grieving first lady lapping semen out of Danzig’s palm, the tracks eventually found an audience, years after the band’s early-1980s split, via various EPs, singles, and collections. Misfits didn’t release a proper debut album until 1982’s Walk Among Us, but by that point, the production was far more polished. What set Static Age apart was the palpable urgency of a young band eager to prove itself—that and an almost surgical knack for crafting infectious melodies. It helped that Danzig was so eager to show off his vocal range, rather than taking the Ian MacKaye or Henry Rollins route and just barking lyrics. A punk band can do a lot within the typical three-chord limitations when it has a frontman with velvety pipes and a propensity for showboating. On Static Age, Misfits proved themselves capable of writing catchier riffs than virtually any of their peers—never mind the subject matter. Good luck finding a group of teens over the past few decades that hasn’t broken into spontaneous karaoke when “Last Caress” kicks in on the car radio. Anyone who can resist shouting “I killed your baby today” after Danzig’s gauntlet-dropping “I got something to say” would probably fail a Voight-Kampff test.
Whether it was a calculated move or not, Static Age demonstrated just how quickly the band was evolving. The record opens with the title track and “TV Casualty,” two perfectly fine but unremarkable hardcore romps, before launching into “Some Kinda Hate.” Suddenly, we’re smack in the middle of Misfits’ deranged world: “The maggots in the eye of love/Won’t copulate,” Danzig moans, yet the Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh chorus wouldn’t sound out of place on an old doo-wop 45. Damned if he doesn’t make the celibacy of fly larvae sound heartbreaking. The journey from there down the tracklisting shows a band embracing its unrefined, weirdo, and sometimes downright dorky influences and ultimately discovering what makes it unique.
Static Age’s greatest triumph is the way it makes 90-second songs about goblins and ghouls sound legitimately dangerous, even romantic, instead of silly. It takes a real commitment to the bit to croon the line, “When new creatures rape your face/Hybrids opened up the door,” (“Hybrid Moments”) and make it sound like it was plucked from a Roy Orbison ballad rather than a deleted Simon and Hecubus sketch from “The Kids in the Hall.” Perhaps Misfits pulled it off so well was because for Danzig, the macabre aesthetic wasn’t an act, but a lifestyle. The frontman spent years living in a decrepit Loz Feliz Craftsman that looked more like a haunted house straight out of a “Scooby-Doo” cartoon than the dwelling of a bona fide rock star.
The shelving of Static Age didn’t halt the band’s success, but it did impede it. Misfits eventually played audiences of tens of thousands; it just took about 35 years of acrimony and protracted legal battles between Danzig and Only to get there. “About 40 years ago, Jerry and I got onstage in New York,” Danzig said onstage last year at Riot Fest in Denver, “and we shocked the whole fucking punk scene who didn’t know what the fuck to make of us.” Audiences eventually figured it out—it just took a few decades.
