"Published four times a year, Stranger With Friction is a magazine that reaches outside of St Rooster Books’ publishing orbit to artists, writers and musicians who we admire and/or are inspired by. It encompasses outsider literature, punk rock, and horror movies which have informed St Rooster Books’ mission statement from the start. Featuring essays and reviews, interviews, fiction and poetry, and artwork, Stranger With Friction is printed as an oversized, perfect bound book-zine through a print-on-demand service and available to e-readers. St Rooster Books seeks to create a unique reading experience by mixing an eclectic group of writers and artists in an entertaining and collectible riot of a combination of Slash Magazine, Rue Morgue, and the Evergreen Review."
This Thanksgiving we bid a sad farewell to one of Italy's great cinematic icons, Daria Nicolodi, actress and writer, and mother to Asia Argento. She wrote the screenplay for her ex-husband's (Dario Argento) film, Suspiria, while going uncredited for the story behind Inferno. She also went uncredited for Luigi Cozzi's 1989 The Black Cat, but was credited for the screenplay to his Paganini Horror. She was primarily known for acting though, appearing in Argento's Deep Red, Phenomena, Tenebre, Opera, and Mother of Tears, as well as Mario Bava's final film, Shock. She had many other film and TV roles through the years and even appeared in Asia's directorial debut Scarlet Diva.
In every role she was magnetic and charming, not to mention lovely. She especially shone bright in Deep Red, where she was funny and fearless, stealing scenes from her co-star David Hemmings. And she certainly had one of the most memorable death scenes in Opera, where the killer put a gun to a peep hole and shot her through the eye.
She leaves this world at the age 70. Our condolences to her friends and family.
Some of you that follow me on social media already know this, but Stranger With Friction is becoming a physical magazine, debuting in about two months from today. I've had a soft open call for the first issue, testing the waters and reaching out to people I often collaborate with and that open call is now closed, but I am looking for new fiction for issue two, which will come out in late April/early May. In addition, I'll be looking for some non-fiction articles on horror movies, punk rock, and outsider literature. Specific details are at the bottom of the page.
When I launched this blog, I only had the vaguest idea of what I wanted to do or how to do it. I was struggling to finish two novels, and all my early efforts at starting an indie publishing house had crashed and burned. I started writing Stranger With Friction at the recommendation of my late friend Jase, who thought it was the very thing I needed to get my writing back on track. I didn't even know what a blog was, but he helped me start my old writing blog, The Path of Most Resistance, but I was always so damn precious with it, it was never any fun and often very forced. Stranger With Friction was supposed to be more fun, but it was also supposed to supplement a physical magazine that would focus on horror, comics, and punk rock, but the magazine never materialized and I became really focused on Stranger for years, building it into a recognizable name, where bands and directors would reach out to me for coverage. My posts started pretty shaky, but I regained my footing and banged out the novels, launching a new publishing imprint, and Stranger helped me get writing gigs with Popshifter, Biff Bam Pop, and Diabolique Magazine. Also, in the mean time, St Rooster Books got bigger, I started publishing anthologies, and this year released two novellas from other writers. I've been so busy the last three years that Stranger has fallen by the way-side, despite my efforts to periodically return to it with either a filmography series, guest posts, the odd "My Heroes Have Always Been Monsters," or the Hardcore Wednesday posts.
Finally launching a magazine brings us full circle and it feels really good. I'll always prefer physical media, because there's just something about holding an actual book, magazine, newspaper, or comic book in in your hands. Its special, it feels magic. I love the tactile connection to the art. My hope is that the magazine far surpasses the blog at its best moments. It will encompass horror and outsider fiction, deep dives into film franchises and band discographies, feature interviews with writers, directors, artists, and publishers, and will hopefully introduce you to new voices in the arts.
Thank you to everyone who continues to come back here. The blog isn't going away and will be getting more frequent updates, to finally be that supplement to a physical magazine and keep you up to date on new releases from St Rooster Books.
The first issue of Stranger With Friction will feature all new fiction and poetry, articles by Chris Cavoretto of Werewolves in Siberia and Mark Pidgeon, an interview with director Izzy Lee, a huge article on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, a profile on publisher Weirdpunk Books, the return of my old Let Us Now Praise Noise column, an all new My Heroes Have Always Been Monsters, and more! If you want to be included in issue two, read out mission statement below the banner for details.
Stranger With Friction; a Magazine of Punk, Literature, and Horror
Published quarterly by St Rooster Books.
Published four times a year, Stranger With Friction is a magazine that reaches outside of St Rooster Books’ publishing orbit to
artists, writers and musicians who we admire and/or are inspired by. It
encompasses outsider literature, punk rock, and horror movies which have
informed St Rooster Books’ mission statement from the start. Featuring essays
and reviews, interviews, fiction and poetry, and artwork, Stranger With Friction is printed
as an oversized, perfect bound book-zine through a print-on-demand service and
available to e-readers. St Rooster Books seeks to create a unique reading
experience by mixing an eclectic group of writers and artists in an
entertaining and collectible riot of a combination of Slash Magazine, Juxtapoz,
Rue Morgue, and the Evergreen Review.
Submissions; Works of fiction should be 2k-5k words and pay is a flat $10 plus contributor copy.
Works of non-fiction (articles, essays, reviews) should be a minimum of 1k and pay is worked out with the individual writer, depending on the length of work, max pay is about $10-$15 plus contributor copy.
In the early to mid 1970s, Spanish director Amando de Ossorio created a quadrology of films involving the resurrected eyeless corpses of Templar Knights aka THE BLIND DEAD. These films may have suffered from low budgets, but more than made up for it with creepy atmosphere and iconic creatures that have retained their ability to strike terror in the hearts of horror fans nearly five decades on. St Rooster Books is proud to present this literary tribute to Ossorio's beloved creations. Featuring new original stories by Paul Lubaczewski, Sam Richard, Heather Drain, Mark Zirbel, Jeremy Lowe, and Tim Murr, with an introduction by Diabolique Magazine's Jerome Reuter.
As some of you know, I wrote a book about my favorite band, Thirsty and Miserable; A Critical Analysis of the Music of Black Flag. Some have poked fun at that title as a little much, but it's supposed to be a little much. That book is the whole reason I started Hardcore Wednesday, because I had to resist multiple digressions into talking about other bands, because I was bound and determined to stay focused on just the album or albums each chapter was specifically about. So, I came out the other side of that book wanting to talk about a shit load of other bands and albums. This is where Thirsty and Miserable and Hardcore Wednesday come together.
Black Flag's debut "Nervous Breakdown" EP (1978) was a mere four songs, about five minutes total and it changed punk rock. "Nervous Breakdown," "Fix Me," "I've Had It," and "Wasted," were short, fast, brash, kinda funny, but also heart wrenchingly sincere. It captured lightning in a bottle and, though, Black Flag would go on to get better and better with each release (fight me, dude, I don't care what some old scenester thinks about Henry Rollins or My War, haha) within the world of punk Black Flag changed things.
And then the singer left. Keith Morris was/is an explosive front man, brimming with energy and charisma. He's one of punk's great lyricists and recognizable and beloved figures. To this day you'll find people who say "Nervous Breakdown" is Black Flag's best albums. Cool, that's an opinion I can respect for sure. It was less than a year from the release of "Nervous Breakdown" that Morris left (highly recommended-go read his autobiography My Damage. Essential book) and formed The Circle Jerks with Redd Kross (and future ex-Bad Religion) guitarist Greg Hetson. The original rhythm section was Roger Rogerson on bass and Lucky Lehrer on drums, but that would change frequently through the years with a number of legendary names like Zander Schloss, Earl Liberty, Flea, Chuck Biscuits, and Charlie Quintana coming and going.
Morris took his songs he'd written during his Black Flag years to make up parts of their 1980 debut album on Frontier Records, Group Sex, which featured an iconic colored shot of a black and white pic of a Circle Jerk audience, taken by the amazing Ed Colver, who also shot the iconic cover of Black Flag's Damaged. Two notable inclusions was a version of Flag's "Wasted" and "I Don't Care" (which later appeared on Everything Went Black) that pissed off Flag guitarist/founder Greg Ginn, but what could he do other than respond with a re-write of "I Don't Care" as "You Bet We've Got Something Personal Against You," sung by bassist Chuck Dukowski on the "Jealous Again" EP (which is my second least favorite Flag song, right behind "Rat's Eyes"). "Red Tape" and "Behind the Door" were also originally Flag songs, the latter surfaced on Damaged as "Room 13."
Group Sex had a lot more going for it than just old Flag songs though. Ripping out of the gates with "Deny Everything," the album burns through fourteen tracks in a mere fifteen minutes, never belaboring the point, never tripping over filler. It's as pure a manifesto of hardcore punk as you could ask for. "I Just Want Some Skank," "Beverly Hills, " "Operation," "Back Against The Wall," "Wasted," "Behind The Door," "World Up My Ass," "Paid Vacation," "Don't Care," "Live Fast Die Young," "What's Your Problem," "Group Sex," "Red Tape," this album is as iconic as the first Ramones album and beat Black Flag by a year with a debut full length. Impassioned, aggressive, tongue in cheek, and packed with anthems. It's one of the purest punk albums ever recorded.
My first exposure to the Circle Jerks came via the Alex Cox punksploitation films Repo Man ("When the Shit Hits the Fan") and Sid and Nancy ("Love Kills") (The Jerks also briefly appear in Repo Man as a lounge act). It was Morris's vocals as much as anything else that lead me to Group Sex, which at the time, came on a super saver double length CD with their second album Wild in the Streets.
As much as I loved Group Sex, I was even more into Wild in the Streets, which opens with the title track, the theme song to a 1960s youth gone wild film of the same name written by Garland Jeffreys.
"'64 Valiant, handful of valiums
Couple of beers really do me right
You better believe us, better trust us
Teenage jive, walking wreck
Wild!"
I've never heard the original and don't even want to. Its a Circle Jerks song as far as I'm concerned and I'm as happy to drive around with it blasting out of my car today as I was over twenty-five years ago. Musically, it's a better album than Group Sex, showing a lot of growth for the band in a mere year, but it contains fewer really memorable songs, but the highs ("Stars and Stripes," "Murder the Disturbed," "Letter Bomb") are really high and the lows ("Forced Labor," "Political Stu") are simply average hardcore, still highly listenable, they just stand out. At any rate, Wild in the Streets remains my favorite Circle Jerks album, but I don't think they recorded a bad album. Critics and fans weren't as kind to Wonderful or their 1995 reunion album Oddities, Abnormalities, and Curiosities, but to me they're still as worthy a spot on your shelf as Golden Shower of Hits and VI. Hell, I generally hate live albums, but I love Gig.
Keith Morris and Greg Hetson kept Circle Jerks alive off and on into the 2000s when they finally parted ways for what seemed like for good. Along the way Morris has remained a force in music, fronting the Red Hot Chili Peppers for one gig while Anthony Kiedis was in jail and joining fellow ex-Black Flag members Bill Stevenson (Descendants/ALL), Dez Cadena (DC3/Misfits), and Chuck Dukowski (Wurm/Chuck Dukowski Sextet) with Descendants/ALL guitarist Stephen Egerton replacing Greg Ginn for an all star Black Flag live tour as FLAG. While the material was mainly the first four years covering Morris and Dez's years as the band's singers, Morris does sing the definitive Rollins era anthem "My War," and it will give you fucking chills. But more importantly than anything, is the super group hardcore outfit, OFF!, Morris formed with Steve MacDonald of Redd Kross, Dimitri Coates of Burning Brides, and Mario Rubalcala of Rocket From the Crypt. Initially releasing four four song EPs featuring cover art by Black Flag artist Raymond Pettibon, OFF! has consistently released the best punk albums of the 21st century (fight me, dude, there's a lot of good punk out there, but OFF! is the band to beat). Hetson, left Redd Kross and did double duty in Circle Jerks and Bad Religion for years. He left Bad Religion a few years ago, but I have no idea why. Morris and Hetson were set to reunite with Zander Schloss this year to do a 40th anniversary tour, but thanks to Covid-19 that's been postponed until next year.
To get your copy of Thirsty and Miserable; A Critical Analysis of the Music of Black Flag click HERE.
I was driving through New Jersey in the middle of the night, back in 1997, on my way to do a spoken word show in Boston at The Lucy Parson's Center, back when it was still in Cambridge. They had taken most of my book-zines on a previous trip up there and agreed to have me and another writer come back and do an in-store spoken word performance. We'd exhausted most of our CDs and cassettes by the time we'd crossed the state line into New Jersey and we decided to start looking for any local college rock stations that might be playing something cool. We weren't disappointed.
We landed on a station playing something that sounded punk, but the song was ending, but it was followed by a rockabilly sounding riff that heralded an impassioned voice that yelled, "You don't care about a nuclear war/How many people die/You're always laughing in the face of death/I'll look you right in the eye/And say...I hope you get drafted!" We laughed with surprise and joy. What a great fucking song! The DJs came on right after and told us that was "I Hope Ya Get Drafted" by The Dicks. "Probably the meanest song I've ever heard," they joked. I wrote the song and band down really fast, determined to find their work.
Now, I had read a little about The Dicks and saw their name in old punk flyers, and I actually knew who their lead singer, Gary Floyd, was, but I knew him as the singer of Sister Double Happiness, who had albums on Alternative Tentacles Records and Sub Pop, and had appeared on the Tribute to the Dead Kennedys album. I made no connections, though. I had no luck finding any of The Dicks' albums in Boston, but I found the 1980-1986 Anthology from Alternative Tentacles when I got back to Knoxville (thank you Disc Exchange for always being awesome).
1980-1986 was an eye-opening, infectious, and exciting collection of 7" and EP tracks, split between the Austin Texas days of 1980-1983 (lineup of Floyd, Buxf Parrott, Pan Deason, and Glen Taylor) and the San Francisco (lineup of Floyd, Tim Carroll, Sebastian Fuchs, and Lynn Perko) version that lasted until 1986 (the band would go on to play sporadically up until 2016). Is it hardcore? The first era, I'd say yes, the second era leaned more towards a blues influenced punk, so if you're looking for loud/fast only, I'd recommend having a more open mind, because this is an essential document. The opening track alone, which, sadly, remains extremely relevant to this very day, to this very moment as I type this, is one of the purest punk songs ever recorded. "Dicks Hate Police" doesn't hold back and goes for the throat...
"Mommy mommy mommy
Look at your son
You might have loved me
But now I have a gun
You better stay out of my way
I think I've had a bad day
Daddy daddy daddy
Proud of your son
He got himself a good job
Killing N- and Mexicans
I'll tell you one thing it's true
You can't find justice, it'll find you..."
From there, the band never backs down from fighting authority with songs like "Anti-Klan," "No Nazi's Friend," "The Police (Force)," and "No Fucking War," but they were also on the frontlines of standing up for gay rights, as Floyd was a bigger than life front man and openly gay. In Texas! The gay community has actually always had a place in punk, whether it was the bi-sexuality of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie and the androgeny of glam that gave way to the New York Dolls and Wayne County or the fact that gay clubs in London were safe havens for punks, not to mention the BDSM that inspired the UK punk scene's fashion sense. In addition to The Dicks, Texas also spawned The Big Boys whose lead singer Randy Biscuits was gay as well. Within hardcore though, it was rare to find openly gay bands, which were less rare in punk and other off-shoots, like death rock and goth.
The original Austin line up of the band reformed in 2004 and did live gigs until 2016. Floyd has stayed busy with Sister Double Happiness and Black Kali Ma. This past Monday, during protests against police brutality, where the cops and white supremacists started a wave of brutality that swept the nation, Floyd posted on his Facebook page this heartfelt note;
"When The Dicks first started we wrote a lot of songs about oppression...sexual, class, racial, etc. I used the N-word in a few songs. I wanted to use the shock element of punk with an anti-racist message...trying to show, and mimic the world we had grown up with. When I was a little kid I said the N-word to a woman who worked at our home...as the words left my lips a sharp quick slap on my mouth from my mother stung and taught me STOP, THINK and YOU'VE BEEN TAUGHT BETTER...I'm thankful for the slap...I will not use the word in those few songs again...I'll use something else...another word. Buxf gave me the idea to think about it and he was certainly right. No one needs a white guy trying to shock or be punk to teach lessons regarding racist cancer language. The songs were always anti-racist...now the language will be.
IN SOLIDARITY
Gary Floyd"
In these times, where everyday we feel like we're on the precipice of a Hell mouth, its reassuring to know we still have heroes out there we can count on, who get it, and who give a shit enough to keep talking about the problems eating away at the heart of our country.
I feel like there was no escaping The Misfits, the New Jersey punk band that combined infectious sing-along whoa-whoa whoas, B-Movie imagery, and muscular aggression. I was destined to find this band and to love them. I didn't know anything about them in middle school, I don't think I'd even heard of Danzig, as he would have been winding down his post-Misfits outfit, Samhain, before going metal with his namesake band. Punk was barely even on my radar. I was obsessed with Metallica's ...And Justice For All and Alice Cooper was still my favorite singer (still is, frankly). I'd see the cassettes for Collection, Walk Among Us, Earth AD, and Evil Live and would always scan down the track listings for each album, always on the verge of buying one of them, but with my limited funds, afraid of throwing my money away on something that might suck. The album covers were amazing; the neon yellow skull, the purple group shot with that rat-bat thing in the back ground, the rough looking zombies, and the group shot individually framed in coffins. Songs like "Teenagers From Mars," "Die, Die, My Darling," "Braineaters," "Astro Zombies"-as a horror kid, I really liked where these guys were coming from.
Visiting my dad one summer, I was skateboarding with my step-brother and one of his friends, and we were talking about music. Skid Row's "Youth Gone Wild" was big then and the three of us really dug that album. I asked them if either had heard The Misfits, the friend got a big smile on his face.
"The Misfits fucking rule!" He had Walk Among Us on cassette and let me hear a bit of "20 Eyes" on his Walkman. To be honest, I couldn't really tell what I had just heard or if it was any good. Mostly it sounded like a buzzsaw in my head, but the thing about it, I walked around for a year with "20 eyeeees in my head/20 eyeeees in my head!" Starting high school, I got deep into punk, as I've said in previous posts. I still only had a vague idea of who Glenn Danzig was, as his 1988 self titled debut album had completely flown over my head and his second album, Lucifuge wasn't even on my radar, but I'd seen the advertisements on Headbangers Ball. I'd put aside my lunch money for a couple of weeks and on a trip to the mall in Oak Ridge, I made a b-line for the record store and went straight to the cassettes with the intention of buying Walk Among Us.
Well, they didn't have it! All they had was Collection and Evil Live. I went with Collection, as I was never big on live albums and I rode home with the cassette safely hidden in my pocket. (If you missed the previous posts, I was raised in a house that was very strictly against heavy metal music and every album I got caught with was scrutinized and judged and could be thrown in the trash, so I always had to be careful.) Fortunately, I was mostly left alone to my own devices. I lived in a windowless room in the basement, I had a drafting table from my dad, an old desk that someone was throwing away, and a decent/cheap stereo from my twelfth birthday. That night, I went downstairs, put the 2x4 under my door knob, so my brothers couldn't fuck with me, put The Misfits on and sat down at my typewriter to work on a new short story.
The production quality was rough, to say the least. Very muddy and I couldn't understand many of the lyrics, but the energy the album was flinging off on every track was infectious as hell, revving me up like I'd taken too many caffeine pills. I credit the music for one of the best horror stories I'd written up to that point. It was zombie story (I was obsessed with George Romero's Dawn of the Dead and wrote a fair number of living dead short stories and comic book scripts in high school) called "Long Night of the Living Dead" or something like that. I really liked how it turned out and to this day Misfits are a staple of my writing sessions.
Over a couple of years, I got my hands on the entirety of their small discography and actively looked for any information on the band I could find, which was scarce in the early 90s. Danzig didn't like to talk about the Misfits and bassist Jerry Only and his brother, guitarist Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein hadn't won a lawsuit that allowed them to reform the Misfits yet. Evil Live seemed to be the last of the recorded material available (until the 1995 release of Collection II, which rounded up all the remaining singles and EP tracks not available on Collection I), which on cassette and prior to the remastered version that came out after the box set (1996) sounded too muddy for it to be in heavy rotation and likewise with Earth AD, it just didn't sound as good as anything on Legacy of Brutality or Walk Among Us to me. So those albums mostly collected dust.
Fast forward a few years, I get Earth AD on CD, and I do a complete 180 on the album. You can hear the whole album on Collection I and II as those tracks close out each album, so it's not as if I'd not heard them all a hundred times, but I'll be damned if it didn't feel like I was hearing them all for the first time. I guess it was the clarity of listening to them on CD vs cassette or maybe my ears finally became attuned to a more thrashy sound after years of listening to hardcore punk, at any rate Earth AD went into heavy rotation, usually paired with Black Flag's Damaged.
I read an interview with Jerry Only sometime in the 90s where he said of the album that it was supposed to sound like Motorhead meets the Misfits, hence the thrash direction, with less anthemic sing-along tracks like on Walk Among Us. The album came out on Danzig's Plan 9 Records, two months after the band broke up in 1983. Danzig was already looking for the exit during the album's recording. He was writing new material for his next project while feeling increasingly disillusioned with the direction of the Misfits and not getting along with his bandmates. Until 2016, when Danzig and Only buried the ax and reformed the "original" Misfits, their's had been one of rock's saddest rivalries. There were lawsuits back and forth, shit-talking, lies, accusations, and even after Only and Doyle brought the Misfits back with Dr Chud on drums and Michael Graves on vocals, shit still couldn't work out and Only was abandoned by everyone to start all over again.
But what rock band worth their salt is without drama? What about the music? The original vinyl release of Earth AD was only nine songs long, the title track, "Queen Wasp," "Devilock," "Green Hell," "Death Comes Ripping," "Wolf's Blood," "Demonomania," "Bloodfeast," and "Hellhound." Clocking in at a mere fourteen and a half minutes. Fortunately, the album was reissued with three additional tracks, a studio version of "Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight," "Die, Die, My Darling," and "We Bite." Danzig later said that "Bloodfeast" and "Death Comes Ripping" were originally intended as Samhain songs (and they did play "Bloodfeast" live).
"Earth AD," which I quoted at the top is a tribute to the Wes Craven cannibal classic, The Hills Have Eyes. It sets the tone for the album as a whirlwind with that furious drumming courtesy of Black Flag's Robo. Jerry and Doyle, across the bulk of the tracks, might as well be playing chainsaws, the way they buzz and burn over the beats. From "Earth AD" to "Queen Wasp" you can't catch your breath as the group blasts on with gang chants of "GO! GO! GO!" And then "Devilock" comes on, going even faster and the only moment of reprieve is the brief rumble before my favorite track "Death Comes Ripping" blasts your spine out. I always assumed that "Green Hell" was probably about the Italian cannibal films like Cannibal Holocaust or Cannibal Ferox, because the Amazon rainforest is also called the Green Inferno. Green Hell is also the title of one of James Whale's (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein) last films, from 1940 about hunting for Incan treasure, but the lyrics don't really seem to match up with any of that, so I don't know. It's a heavy song. I love the studio version of "Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight" and that's no knock against the live version on Walk Among Us. The mid-tempo stomping intro that fades into a wash of feedback as Danzig asks the eternal question; "Mommy...Can I Go Out...And Kill TONIGHT??" Before the band thrashes back in like psychos on a rampage is fucking glorious and one of the Misfits finest and most iconic recorded moments. I can easily imagine Danzig becoming a werewolf while singing "Wolf's Blood." "It's wolf's blood/It's pumping like it's fucking in my veins/And I feel my vertebrae shaking..." Such a mean song! And sticking with what I assume must be a werewolf theme, "Demonomania" finds Danzig proclaiming that his "father was a wolf" and his "mother was a whore." "Bloodfeast" is the album's slowest track and you can really hear Samhain coming here as there's more of a goth/death rock feel than thrash/hardcore. And it's a good, catch your breath track, even if Robo is still pounding the fuck out of those cymbals like his life depended on it. "Hellhound" starts with the chorus ("that's gonna rip your face off") spinning out of control, but tucks in for the verses and then releasing again. It's a hell of a fun yo-yo effect, which originally ended the album. Instead though, we're next treated to another one of the Misfits' most iconic songs, "Die, Die My Darling." "Die die die, my darling/Don't utter a single word/Die die die, my darling/Just shut your pretty eyes/I'll be seeing you again/I'll be seeing you...in Hell!" What a break-up song! We end on an absolute rager, "We Bite," which brings back both cannibalism and wolf references, making it a sort of summation of Earth AD.
The brilliant cover art was painstakingly hand drawn by LA punk legend Mad Marc Rude, who spent days on the stipulation and undead characters. Depending on which version you get the black and white art was augmented with a green and purple or green and pink background. For a band known for having cool images on their t-shirts, albums, and 7 inches, the Earth AD is my favorite of anything they've ever released. there's a brilliant and heartbreaking documentary on Marc Rude, currently streaming on Amazon, called Marc Rude: Blood, Ink, & Needles [2014], and I highly recommend checking it out. He also did the artwork for one of Tex and The Horseheads' albums. He was a mighty talent plagued by personal demons.)
Misfits were never a hardcore band before Earth AD, in fact, when they started, there wasn't even a guitarist. Glenn played electric keyboard and the Misfits sounded more like Suicide. But after getting Bobby Steele on guitar and later Doyle, they truly became the epitome of everything good about punk rock. They created the sub-genre of horror punk, and influenced countless bands over the next four decades. Earth AD isn't there best musical statement overall and not the strongest album they could have gone out on, but for the aggression, for the catharsis I get from listening to it-the album is a beast unlike anything they unleashed before or since. When the band came back in 1996, they went for a happy medium between the sing-along anthems of Walk Among Us and the muscular thrash of Earth AD, with greater success on American Psycho than on Famous Monsters. The last album of the only-Only era, Devil's Rain, also reached back to Earth AD, with just a bit more metal influence and longer songs. Now that the "original" Misfits have played a number of shows together, Danzig has stated he's open to recording a new album. Frankly, I don't care if it sucks. I don't think it will, but regardless, they've already sold a copy to me, whatever it winds up sounding like.
