Danzig 4P and 5: Blackacidevil - by R.K.

Danzig 4 has always been my personal favorite. The songs really spoke to me on a much deeper level than most other music. I feel like Glenn's lyrics were more personal and emotional at points. It gave me this occult vibe that I can't really place. Maybe it's just me and that's a completely subjective feeling. The album is quite literally magical for me. From a sound standpoint, all of the previous albums have certain consistencies within them but the consistency on 4 seems to be its lack of consistency. The style changes from song to song and they pulled it off quite well in my opinion.

Danzig 5 never appealed to me when it came out. I was too young and close-minded to appreciate it. Every couple of years, I would give it a run and be like, "nope, I can't do this..." until one one day a couple of years ago. I listened to 4 from start to finish and I wanted more but I wanted some Danzig that was fresh, something that I haven't heard a million times. So, I said fuck it and through on 5 (the re-release with the extra tracks [that's important to my outlook]) and it fucking blew me away! Hearing the albums back to back put everything in a new context for me. They are a perfect duality or yin/yang per se.

Like I said, I approach 4 from the standpoint of an emotional occultist. Looking at the album in that light, this is what I get: 75% emotions intertwined with spirituality/mysticism and 25% of the focus on physicalities. Songs like "Can't Speak", "Going Down To Die", "Bringer Of Death", "Son OF The Morning Star", and "Let It Be Captured" take on the occult qualities in a very human personal/emotional way. Spliced in between are songs like "Sadistikal", "Little Whip" and "The Stalker Song" which reach into base, physical ideas. To me this is a genuinely spiritual side of Danzig and also the first and last time that he's revealed it in such a clear, powerful, and direct way. Musically, it's 75% rock, 25% experimental/electronic. The album ends, there is a long silence, and then "Invocation" kicks in. It is almost entirely occult-based, maybe more so that any other Danzig song up to that point, but musically it's also one of the most experimental. Here is the bridge between the 2 albums. From this point on everything inverts.

Danzig 5 is, to me, the perfect opposite of 4. Musically it's 75% experimental/electronic and 25% rock. 75% of the content focuses on physical/human/base ideas: lust, physical pain, bondage, deceit, etc ("7th House", "Sacrifice", "Come To Silver"). 25% of the album consists of the shadow side of spirituality ("Ashes", "Bleedangel", "See All You Were"). A lot of these songs, like Danzig 4, blur the line between physical and spiritual but I think they are all top heavy with either one idea or the other.

On both albums, he strays off into synthetic sounds when the subject matter strays from the spiritual. The more base and physical the idea, the more electronic/synthetic everything becomes.

So to sum it up.

4 is rock with electronic/experimental undertones and flavorings. 5 is electronic/experimental with rock undertones and flavorings.

4 is elevated/lofty/spiritual/mystical (at points) with undercurrents of sex and physicalities. 5 is sexual/base/physical/brutal (at points) with undercurrents of occultism and dark spirituality.

4 is a pentagram. 5 is an inverted pentagram.

According to some Luciferian philosophies, man is said to be an ignorant animal created by God while Lucifer was elevated and given the gift of knowledge. Man is trapped between two contradicting principles: the baseness of animals/biology and the spiritual nature and intellect of angels (who are asexual). Man strives to ascend but is anchored by animal urges. (And every mythology, I'm sure you know, basically states this idea where man is the sum of the parts of the good and bad guy but that strays from this discussion!) Danzig gave us the duality with 4 and 5.

4 is white muddled with some grey. 5 is black muddled with some grey. 4 is yin. 5 is yang.

I don't know if Danzig is even aware of this. I always hope that it was intentional and sometimes I think it may be based on sketchy things he has said but interviewers never dig in that department with him...and that pisses me off. Whenever he says something a bit "kooky" they dive back into the same boring shit ("so any talk of a misfits reunion?", "how do you feel about these new bands...?") Who gives a fuck! Why doesn't someone ask about the 7 album cycle where he said he numbered them through 7 on purpose because he had to. He set something in motion that cannot be stopped. Why the fuck would someone ask about a Misfits reunion after he says something like that?! Around the time of 4 someone asked him if he believed in Satan. He said, "I used to believe in alot of things. I don't know what I believe in anymore." Going down to die?

If you take the duality concept, it ends on a negative note. Instead of ascending into spirituality, Danzig descends into base physicalities.

...And from that point on, all of his albums lost the passion and fire and magic. And it was all replaced with campy comic book bullshit. I've grown to love and accept these albums and there are glimmers of that old magic in there but something seriously changed.

-- R.K. --