14. Danzig / 666 – Satan's Child. 1999. 3/5

The band that Glenn Danzig had put together after the dissolution of the group that played on the band’s first four albums had waded into stormy waters when it came to the rapture that was occurring in the music scene in the back half of the 1990’s decade. Grunge had given way to alternative metal, and then into the even more psychoanalysed industrial metal sound that had found its footings at this time. The band first dipped their toes into this lake with the follow up to that fourth album, titled “Danzig 5: Blackacidevil”, an album whose whole sound structure had gone through a processing plant and come out the other end like a mangled car having gone through the crusher at the old car’s home. Granted, there are people out there that enjoyed this album, and those people are generally dressed in strait jackets and locked in padded rooms. There was a deal of experimentation that went on during that album that certainly divided the opinions of the fan base.
Following this, the band moved around again, with Jeff Chambers on guest guitars and Josh Lazie on bass guitar coming on board to join Danzig who again contributed guitars to the album and returning drummer Joey Castillo. In regard to the recording of the album, Glenn was quoted in an interview with Metal maniacs in December 1999, "This record is the first time I've ever recorded my vocals digitally. I recorded with a mic and in a booth, but through a computer, and that's how the overdubs were done on this record as well. What I tried to do with this record is take all my favourite elements from Danzig 1 through 5, and the Thrall EP, put it all together and add a couple of new flavours."
Most fans would have been excited about this development. The best of everything that had come before this combined?! It had “winner” written all over it! The end result of course is open to the individuals opinion. And of course, given that it was the band’s sixth album, the temptation was too great not to use 666 as the opening to the title, in this case even captioning it like a bible verse as 6:66, and of course then as a preface to the remainder of the album title, Satan’s Child.

In many ways, this album tries to right a wrong while still suggesting what they were doing is the right course of action. It's almost like a child admitting they had done something wrong to their parents, and yet continuing to go down the track of those actions without guilt. I mean, the album does try from the outset to rectify what could be seen as the overcompensation of “Blackacidevil” away from what many considered to be Danzig’s core sound, and yet in the same instant continuing down the path through the industrial metal genre anyway.
“Five Finger Crawl” opens with an energy that brings hope to the heart from the outset, though the effects used on Glenn’s vocals does tend to grate until you become used to it. Already however the feeling of the album is a better fit than almost everything that came from the previous album. This is followed by “Belly of the Beast” that does morph the old Danzig sound with the new industrial version, combining a solid rhythm underneath Glenn’s more energetic vocal, and a guitar slot that mimics the genres tones perfectly. “Lilin” tries too hard to follow the path of an industrialised Alice in Chains song and is bombarded by the ugly sounding tin snare in parts of the track that pre-dates the abomination of Lars Ulrich’s drum snare sound on the “St Anger” album. It is a song of two parts, the awful snare sounding piece, and then the remainder of the track which has the bones to produce a half decent doom metal inspired track.
“Unspeakable” raises the tempo and energy to create something that sound very good but also leaving the feeling that it is unfnished, that it needed just a bit more polish to lift it to being an excellent song. This is followed by “Cult Without a Name” that does a similar job of segueing between the fast paced heavy song to the lilting doom introspectiveness, all within the best phases of the Danzig tradition. The natural segue into "East Indian Devil (Kali's Song)" about the goddess Kali does come with its less savoury aspects, the return of the effects on Glenn’s vocals and which does become a messy mashing of a song. “Firemass” has a similar meshing of eastern sounds as well, and while not a complete mess like the previous song still fails to find its place in the way the album has been recorded.
“Cold Eternal” returns to the mystical wailing under almost non-existent instrumental backing, which is overwhelmed by the hard riffing follow up, the title track “Satan’s Child”. The music on this track drowns out the course of “Cold Eternal”, but also is tainted slightly by the less wonderful wailing of Glenn through the chorus. The song is fine but with Glenn’s vocals now heading in a less powerful fashion it comes off as a slight disappointment. “Into the Mouth of Abandonement” is a combination of the previous two tracks, moving from quietly spoken lyrics and that snare rim to loud over the top riff and vocals mixed in together. This does facilitate the lyrics of the song with intent, but again it sounds unfinished, unpolished, requiring something more to really get the most out of the song. You can pretty much read the same for “Apokolips”, though the sifter pieces are louder and more pronouced before the explosion into the hard and heavy riffing and vocals.
The album concludes with “Thirteen”, a song that Glenn was invited to write for Johnny Cash and whose acoustic version appeared on his 1994 album “American Recordings”. Danzig’s version for this album is in the heavy blues style, and also appeared as the opening to the movie “The Hangover” and closes out the album with a surprising amount gravitas due to the haunting vocal form Glenn and easy perfect guitar and drums to complete the song.

The utter abrasiveness of “Blackacidevil” when I first heard it on release was pretty much enough for me to ditch Danzig forever. My distaste for that album was brought on by the significant change of direction the band took at that time, and given my own tastes were not heading in that direction, I felt at the time that I wouldn’t need to head down that path again. However, I had a change of heart about six months after this album was released, when I decided I really needed to give the band another opportunity, if only for the pretty colours on the album cover. So, I secured a copy of the album from that scourge of the internet, Napster, and had several listens at that time. And that first impression of the album was... ‘well, it's better than the last album...’... and then it was filed. And probably the only times I have listened to it since was when each new Danzig album came out, and I would listen to it to compare to that new release.
I recently did an episode for this podcast with my partner in crime Steve Holz where we reviewed and ranked all of the Danzig albums from our least favourite to favourite, and so again listened to the album several times. And now for this episode I have had the album on for the past 2-3 weeks. And I think it is fair to say that in that time period of the past few months, I have come to enjoy the album more than I did when I first heard it 24 years ago. Now that may well be because I am less picky about music at my advanced age, or that I am more capable of forgiving some flaws from artists I appreciate. And Danzig is certainly one of those bands. My main thoughts on listening to the album again are that there are passages of songs on this album that I really like, but also within those same songs there are passages that I think harm the song overall. And for me that is probably my main gripe with this album. It is very mixed musically and certainly vocally. Glenn is changing his style from what he had in the classic bands era, and some of it is okay but some of it is not. And the vocal effects and snare rim tin sound and overall guitar is just not up to par. Perhaps if it was re-recorded without that stuff, and having Tommy Victor on guitar rather than Glenn himself, then maybe this would be a better listen. Maybe.