Review Summary: A fascinating disaster
Although 1996’s Blackacidevil was released just two years after the preceding 4, it showed Danzig in a dramatically different position. Rick Rubin’s influence had completely eroded with a change in record labels and all the musicians but the singer himself were out of the picture, resulting in him handling a good bulk of instrumentation with supplementary contributions from different players. The album also shows the group completely embracing the industrial elements that were merely hinted at on its predecessor, suggesting that it could be a natural extension of their evolution and prove to be the start of a strong second wind.
Yeah no, sorry, this sucks.
Like past Danzig openers, “7th House” immediately establishes the album’s tropes and gives the listener an idea of what to expect going forward. By that I mean, the track highlights just about everything that has gone wrong. The production is an absolute mess as the drum programming undermines the driving beat with a tinny, cluttered sound, the vocals are lathered in a distorted fuzz that renders the attempted hooks incoherent, and the hollow-sounding guitars are buried as to make the track lack any real sense of impact. It also doesn’t help that it just isn’t a particularly well-written song, coming off stock at best between all the “I’m gonna make you cum” yells.
On the bright side, there are some tracks that could’ve worked with some thorough tweaking. “Sacrifice” is the closest thing to a genuine hit here as the vocal contrasts are much coherent and the drum loop sets up the chorus rather nicely. “See All You Were” and “Hint of Her Blood” feel like scrappy demos of otherwise solid songs as their slothful crawl, filtered calls, and intrusive beats would’ve been better served with a more aggressive guitar presence. “Come to Silver” and the closing “Ashes” is another fascinating numbers that explore the softer side of this formula, the former featuring acoustic strums that reflect its origins as a song originally written for Johnny Cash getting drowned out by a Nine Inch Nails-style pounding and the latter is a much more balanced burnout.
But at the end of the day, much of this just isn’t constructed well enough to make these inherently bad ideas salvageable. This is perhaps best exemplified by the band’s reinterpretation of Sabbath’s “Hand of Doom,” which features new lyrics and a revamped song structure. Assuming you aren’t turned off by the edgelord necro-sexual lyrics, the soft/hard dynamics just feel more like an aimless rehearsal without the faster middle segment to counteract the main riff. Elsewhere, the title track and “Power of Darkness” build off the pointless drives of “7th House” while “Serpentia” is another track that loses a promising build to directionless repetition.
Danzig 5: Blackacidevil is a fascinating disaster that seems equally beset by ideas that could’ve been fostered by a better execution and ideas that just should’ve never happened to begin with. The move to a more industrial-informed sound makes sense if you squint and such a dramatic shift is commendable, by the lack of a solid lineup and inferior production really brings it down. Things would thankfully never get this bad again but this album reflects the lack of focus and other voices that has come to cripple Danzig for the rest of his career. Perhaps there are enough promising ideas and so bad, it’s good moments for the most fringe fans, but nobody else needs to hear this dumpster fire.
