Glenn Danzig’s career is a case study in the unsustainability of rock mythologizing. Given the way he built himself up in his first decade of public life, he was bound to fall sooner or later: Danzig presented himself as a smooth-voiced demon, a guy with a library of occult tomes and an endless supply of primal lust—the very stuff of Parental Advisory label hysteria and banned MTV videos. His music was tight and muscular, and he made sure he and his band appeared that way, too, particularly after he moved from New Jersey to L.A. But this macho posturing had its limits. In time, many fans went from exalting “Tired of Being Alive,” the down-and-out rallying cry from 1990’s Danzig II: Lucifuge, to actually being tired of his conspiracy-minded nonsense and questionable art direction. No metal god is truly immortal, infallible, or devoid of humanity, so perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised to find by the mid-’90s that Danzig, at his core, is the sort of guy who gets bummed that kids didn’t trick-or-treat at his house. Before all that, though, there was one album that lived up to the mighty image he’d built: 1992’s Danzig III: How the Gods Kill, where the classic lineup of his solo band in its prime found an emotional maturity unmatched by any record he made before or after. It’s Danzig at his most sinister, yet also his most human.
Danzig’s voice has always carried a hint of tenderness, and in How the Gods Kill’s slower tracks, that quality comes to the fore. The title track poses a heavy question in a soft tone: “If you feel alive/If you’ve got no fear/Do you know the name/Of the one you seek?” The implication is clear: Are you ready for power you may not be able to comprehend? Are you ready to go to the next level? He and his bandmates surely were. Throughout the album, Danzig, guitarist John Christ, bassist Eerie Von, and drummer Chuck Biscuits achieve a bigger, denser sound than they’d previously had. Danzig’s subtle croon only intensifies the effect of the blaze—stoked by desperate longing, he sounds that much more demonic. The nickname “Evil Elvis” had been lobbed at him ever since his 1988 solo debut, largely due to the way he packaged ferocious energy in accessible charm and his deep, roaring vocal delivery. But Roy Orbison is a more important spiritual influence on Danzig’s style, at least on this album, even if “Evil Roy” doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Orbison was goth before goth, draping himself with darkness not just in his black-on-black look, but in his lovelorn voice and his tales of sorrow. You can hear his music echoed clearly in “Sistinas,” a sincerely romantic love song where vibrato guitar and delicate strings back Danzig’s somber words (“I lost my soul, deep inside/Oh, and it’s so black and cold”). Orbison’s shadow is there, too, on “Anything,” a sweet ballad that ripens into a rager. On Gods, Danzig isn’t the shape-shifting, demonic wolfman of his earlier records. He’s a devil who feels, thinking about the one that got away while he sits on a throne of skulls.
Elsewhere, the bluesier tracks get even more juiced up than usual, largely a result of Danzig taking on an increased production role alongside Rick Rubin. The slyly seductive 1988 track “Mother,” which would become a hit after being remixed a year after this album’s release, remains Danzig’s calling card, but “Dirty Black Summer” is the song that perfects the form. Despite its name, it’s an elevated dirtbag rocker for all seasons, with Christ channeling every beer-soaked ’70s guitar hero into one of his most jubilant riffs; “Summer” swings faster, burns harder, and revs up to a hallucinatory peak.
Christ’s guitar playing was easily the most irreplaceable aspect of this era of the band. On Gods, he was in sync with the early 1990s’ disdain for flash, yet far closer to a raw blues tradition than, say, the industrial crunch of White Zombie’s Jay Yuenger or Prong’s Tommy Victor (who would go on to play with Danzig starting in 1996 and join the band permanently in 2008). A lot of his style at the time had to do with Danzig‘s interest in pre-rock blues and pop music—Christ has said that his personal taste is more driven by classical and jazz—but he’s still a crucial reason why Danzig’s first four albums, especially Gods, are revered today. Lately, even Danzig himself seems to have come around to appreciating Christ’s contributions to his sound: His two most recent albums, 2015’s Skeletons and this year’s Black Laden Crown, both sounded as though Victor was aiming to recreate Christ’s looser approach (with some success, particularly on Crown). All of this only makes it more obvious how important Christ was circa Gods. He shouldn’t have to settle for teaching gigs and weddings in Maryland—and it’s worth noting that he seems amenable to playing with Danzig again.
Gods marks the moment when Danzig transcended his punk origins and staked out a deeper place in the modern music canon, patching together the influences of Dixon, Orbison, and Howlin’ Wolf into something grand. It’s a record about confronting your inner strength, testing if it’s enough to endure heartbreak and uncontrollable lust; it’s about feeling that God is failing you, and wanting the power of a god all the same. Danzig himself would never again be able to seek higher truth in his music quite like this without devolving into trite spirituality. By 1995, the classic lineup of his band had collapsed. Various hardcore sidekicks came and went in Danzig’s ranks in the years that followed, and while that kept him on the road, the gleam in his eye circa Gods was often missing. A quarter-century after this watershed album, he’s still at it, even if recreating the howls of “Bodies” and “Dirty Black Summer” is more labor-intensive these days. Will someone show him how the gods kill again?
