Review Summary: Blues metal perfection
Danzig’s self-titled debut may have made a strong impression that arguably remains their most famous to this day, but its 1990 sequel was a drastic leap forward creatively. While the band’s foundational tropes may be the same as before, a much fuller production job and a noticeably more comfortable dynamic lead to a considerably broader execution. Their underlying Delta inspirations are pushed to absurd extremes, giving birth to a blues metal style that hearkens back to the earliest days of Black Sabbath in a way that no stoner doom acolytes could ever dream of reproducing.
Armed with the confidence to fully embrace the characterization that was merely hinted at before, Lucifuge makes for a rather theatrical listen. The themes of devil worship and occult orgies seem to have more intent behind them this time around as the opening shuffle on “Lost Way Back from Hell” is injected with some Louisiana bayou storytelling and “Snakes of Christ” speeds up the “Twist of Cain” riff while pairing it with some ritualistic verses and a fun chorus. There’s even room for a little post-Ozzy Sabbath homage as Danzig himself admitted to transposing the riff from “Zero the Hero” to the erotic strut that defines “Her Black Wings.”
This extra bombast is reinforced by the songwriting reaching its most dynamic extents yet. The musicians fully embrace their softer side with contrasting results on “I’m the One” and “Blood and Tears,” the former an unplugged performance defined by twangy Robert Johnson acoustic strums and a coming-of-age tale turned demonic while the latter is swept in earnest heartbroken balladry that Danzig had allegedly written for Roy Orbison. The softer segments also do well in fleshing out the building structures on “Devil’s Plaything” and “777” and “Tired of Being Alive” and the especially distraught “Pain in the World” edge their slow shuffles closer to the depths of doom.
Of course, this album was likely where Danzig’s tendency to go too far into character started getting too hard to ignore. “Killer Wolf” is the most egregious example of this in action as the band’s hazy muscular chug is met with the singer’s jarring cosplay of an old-timey bluesman, threatening to derail the entire experience, while “Girl” seemingly overcompensates for its sparse lyrics by slurring the title to hilariously unintelligible levels. It’s easy to imagine listeners getting turned off and no doubt contributed to the band’s memetic status, but I can’t help but find it charming. It feels almost like the camp of the eighties’ cheesiest metal singers getting caught up in a more ironic world.
Overall, Danzig’s second album is a display of blues metal perfection. While plenty of groups were tapping into these rootsy inspirations by the time, the interpretation here is unlike any other as the band’s already distinct darkness was accentuated by their willingness to go all-in on the theatrical execution. The atmosphere is too cheesy to be scary, but the hooks are constant winners with the musicianship perfectly suited to the different moods at hand. Plenty of musicians have tried to replicate the blues metal sound (the first Spirit Division album was admittedly my attempt at doing so), but nothing truly sounds like Lucifuge.
