Rolling Stone, 2/18/93   
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PERFORMANCE
DANZIG
Roseland
New York City
Decenber 19th, 1992

   Glenn Danzig understands heavy metal better most luminaries of loud. 
From the eerie, blood-red hue that engulfs the two 15-foot gargoyles 
flanking the Roseland stage to the Black Sabbath-on-steroids chords his 
band, Danzig, grinds out from the get-go, Glenn Danzig is a muscle-bound
metalliod Dark Lord raising a leather-gauntleted fist at the heavens as 
if to challenge the gods themselves. Probably the same deities he pays 
tribute to with Danzig's latest album, Danzig III-How The Gods Kill. 
Now that's metal.
   Stark melodrama is the thirtysomething Glenn Danzig's turf. At points, 
it verges on a vicious self-parody. While certainly imbued with the stuff 
of a long line of men in black-Johnny Cash's expressive, authoritative 
baritone, Jim Morrison's pathos, Nick Cave's psychosis-Danzig takes it 
to Vegas-like extremes. The enormous cow-skull belt buckle riding on a 
pneumatic pelvis at once suggests WWF wrestling and Elvis at Caesars 
Palace. The lusty, Presley-patented karate chops, lupine scowls and long 
mutton chops swiped from Marvel Comics' Wolverine give it all a dark
flamboyance. (To say nothing of the twenty-foot cow-skull drum riser 
straight out of Spinal Tap, lit-up eyes included.)
   But what the hell? From the opening dirge of "Godless," the 
3000-strong, stage-diving throng clad in Misfits and Samhain shirts -
reminders of Glenn Danzig's Eighties hardcore legacy - know what they've 
come here for: a B movie and the ultimate safe, suburban power fix. And 
that's precisely what Danzig is delivering.
   The band keeps it taut, simple and brutally effective. Guitarist John 
Christ's spare power riffing unwinds like a cobra as the band kicks into 
high gear through the decibel invocations of "Snakes of Christ" and "Am 
I Demon." Drummer Chuck Biscuits flails mercilessly above it all, 
mustering one of the fiercest backbeats in rock, his kettledrums sounding 
like distant thunder on "How the Gods Kill" as shaggy bassist Eerie Von 
drills out Danzig's steely rythms, never receiving full credit in the 
mix. Yet without Von's invisble steel sinew, the whole thing would fall 
apart. 
   When the heavy-metal violence settles down and Glenn Danzig steps into 
the icy blue spotlight to croon the pulsing, anti-Catholic Elvis fantasy 
ballad "Sistinas" ("Sistine smile/You'll never know/The trap it sets"), 
the man's sheer lung power is evident, his overwhelming talent at odds 
with his own comic-book trappings. Then again, how can you argue with 
Glenn Danzig, shirtless, sweating and making his point perfectly clear 
during "Heart of the Devil": "Because aaaaahhhhmm eeeevil!" 
   Danzig needn't be so obvious. The devil knows whose side he's on.     
-Mike Gitter