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Music Features

Devilution

INCORRECT: “I’m not part of the politically correct generation, nor do I want to be.”

Quite right, too, thinks the gratified reader: a Manson/Danzig dressing room not ankle-deep in absinthe and candlewax, and groaning with the bodies of discarded groupies, is no Manson/Danzig dressing room at all. In the context of Welch’s book, which recounts with painful honesty his long floundering through addiction toward Jesus Christ, the moment has a particular weight: this is one of the hellish waystations on the road to his rebirth. And hellish is the word — those Manson boys were inventively orgiastic no doubt, but it is the presence of Glenn Danzig, tour guide to the dark side, that gives the scene its eye-stinging whiff of genuine brimstone.

From the seminal lo-fi splatterings of the Misfits, through Samhain’s awkward, embryonic goth-metal, and on to the full-on diabolic power blues of the band he named after himself, Danzig has always been, shall we say, single-minded. As a writer, he maintains himself in a netherworld of dark pomp and occult imagery. As a rock-and-roller, he is of the hunter-gatherer school: the women in his songs are either temptresses or fawning supplicants, leather gauntlets are worn, and his own phallic might is regularly extolled. His voice is a rich instrument: now a wolfman yelp, now a gang-boss war cry, now a bluesy invocation, wavering over the depths. As the Muse dictates, he will write a symphony (1993’s Black Aria) or go briefly “industrial” (1996’s Blackacidevil). “There’s no limit, really,” he says over the phone from his home in California. “If I wanna do it, I do it. I’m not politically correct. I’m not part of the politically correct generation, nor do I want to be. I say what I wanna say, and if I somebody doesn’t like it, go fuck yourself.”