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IN REVIEW: Danzig - "Danzig Sings Elvis"


If you haven't paid much attention to Glenn Danzig, or his formidable career as both a solo artist and onetime singer for highly influential horror/punk group The Misfits, there's a chance that the thing you know him best for is a picture that circulated around the internet about ten years ago. A true down-to-earth moment for the rock star, he was snapped coming out of a store carrying some groceries and a box of kitty litter, and people went wild for it in a cute, "he's just like us" sort of way.

A passion project and a tribute to his childhood idol that had been in the works for several years, Danzig Sings Elvis is the result of a lifetime of fandom; in pre-release interviews, he talked about his reverence for The King, and glowed about how influential Elvis was on his own career.

So, what do we get from this long-awaited project? A string of dull, uninspired sounding covers, performed and mixed so badly it's shocking to me that it was given the green light for release, as though no one involved with the making of the album had the common sense to listen to the playback and say no. I've heard better tributes at karaoke night, and they were performed by people who weren't getting paid a penny for it. That this was put out as a product expectant of financial gain is an insult to consumers.

Sure, this album will likely end up with its share of defenders, the same way there are people who revel in the "so bad it's good" mentality of really awful B-movies. Still, with its novice-level production and fundamentally flawed execution, this is about as bad as it gets; the only purpose this album serves is as an artifact for the morbidly curious, the audio equivalent of the thing we were told to Google and then immediately regretted when we discover that no, we should not have Googled that. So as to say, this album should not have happened.

Who is this for, anyway? Elvis fans will recoil in horror at the slash job Danzig does to the songs and legacy of a man whose legacy is, if we're being honest, more and more tenuous as the decades pass. Danzig fans will run for their well worn copy of How the Gods Kill and/or a barf bag as they listen to this lifeless, tone deaf offering that might make them question whether or not Danzig has done anything truly worthwhile in the last 25 years. It's a slap in the face to the involved artists and their fans alike, the promise of a heartfelt tribute that turned out to be a stinking heap of shit. No amount of kitty litter can cover its stench.

April 24, 2020 • Cleopatra
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