american recordings – Scrambled Brains

On Danzig’s third album, the band follows their goth blues metal style through heavy riffs, front-man Glenn Danzig’s low-to-mid-pitched howls and growls, and crooning passages of lightness which invariably end up traded back into brooding over women, religion, and/or mortality. Strong drum-work and expressive tone-handling from the guitarist lend the swaggering melodies (usually powered by a sturdy bass-line) a wider range of movement, and the choruses ride a fine line of frequency, occasionally tipping over into a few too many repetitions, but generally fitting the surrounding structures of the songs.

There’s a strong rockabilly flavor to most of the songs, with the slower tempos, stiffer guitar edge, and Satanic gloss being the main points of divergence from that style. And while the lyrics tend to be secondary to the impassioned delivery, the flow and net impact of the songs builds out to a solid overall album, though the title track steals the limelight from the rest.

With their second album, Lords of Acid tighten up the sprawl of electronic styles they explored with Lust, and find a tighter combination of high-speed techno, Euro breakbeat, sultry vocals, and sexual lyrics. Absurd perversity (e.g., being brought to orgasm by pubic lice in “The Crablouse”) is a frequent quality, and one that the group is careful not to let get drowned out by the barrages of keyboards, percussion, and samples. BDSM (”Do What You Wanna Do”, ”She & Mr. Jones”), drugs (”Marijuana in Your Brain”, “Blowing Up Your Mind”), teen sex (”Young Boys”), and a range of related topics receive focus over the course of the album, with a brashness echoed by the occasional use of electric guitar loops for extra swagger.

Dips into fully-functional dub territory, music-box imitation, and nods to disco serve as further accentuation of the group’s playfulness, but it’s rare for the songs to let that silliness rob them of their ability to bang on strong. While a track or two could have been dropped for more concentrated impact, the album taken all together has a nice flow to it, jumping from groove to groove without sinking too deeply into repetitiveness and dropping in enough instrumental breaks to keep the lyrical goofiness on the right side of overwhelming.

Here’s the censored cover art.

The cover art used in Japan.

And the cover art used for the remastered edition.

Tag: american recordings

Danzig – Danzig III: How the Gods Kill [1992; American Recordings, Def American Recordings, Popron]

Lords of Acid – Voodoo-U [1994; American Recordings, Antler-Subway, Caroline Records, Mad Vox, WHTE LBLS]