KERRANG! #443, 5/15/93
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Trouble For Evil Elvis! (p.45)

DANZIG
'Thrall-Demon Sweat Live' (Def American advance tape)

Glenn Danzig is an extraordinary little man.  He is neither Rock god nor
actor, but stuck somewhere between the two stools like a midget American
Gladiator with a chip on his shoulder.  Trapped insde that little bulging
body is a warrior of Genghis Khan just waiting to escape, a demon seed
thwarted by ego and pretension.
  Glenn Danzig, right, is this little precoius nerd who insisted on seeing
every UK photographer's portfolio before allowing them to snap him onstage.
Careful of his ridiculous image - part dwarf, part maggot - the man is a
Doom Metal strutter to the core.  Nice guiff.
  Then there's Glenn Danzig as Jim Morrison Presley.  The funny guy with
bimbo cheekbones and smouldering eyes.  The pseudo-sex machine who filmed
the video for "Mother" with a naked model in bondage.  Sometimes, Danzig is
a stupid cabaret show, a hokum-poet and about as sinister as a bag of
sprouts.  All of this is here on this daftly-monickered mini-album, and
there'll be absolutely no laughing at the back of Glenn's schoolroom.
  'Thrall-Demon Sweat Live' is a monstrously cumbersome affair.  Boasting
two new studio tracks, one hilariously ironic cover and four chestnuts
recorded live in California last Halloween, it is not an album for the
cynical.  Tough.
  Top of the heap must be Glenn's absolutely gut-busting rendition of
'Trouble'.  The old Presley standard is turned upside down and executed
with the po-faced aplomb of a bad covers band.  In marked contrast, 'The
Violet Fire' and 'It's Coming Down' aspire to some higher plateau, falling
way short of the mark as usual, and dragging their rotten bones around like
cemetery zombies.
  The live material, however, is relatively efficient.  'Sistinas' and
'Mother' are as dramatic as the originals, whilst 'Snakes Of Christ' and
'Am I Demon' sould like Wolfsbane with a bad attack of literary delusion.
  Ultimately, Glenn Danzig is simply too humourless to be believable.  There
is not one single spark of warmth, grace or irony in his makeup, and that
makes the man a pain in the arse.  Even Rollins can laugh at himself, and
Henry could have Glenn with one arm tied behind his back.
  Glenn Danzig; not big and not clever.

  Chris Watts

  [photo of Glenn Danzig with caption:
   "GLENN DANZIG: as sinister as a bag of sprouts!"]