The Misfits; Coffin Box

Before Metallica butchered this band with their awful redneck version of Die, Die, My Darling, (and to a lesser extent, Last Caress and Green Hell but that was a completely different band, they had credibility back then) and before Hot Topic raped the legacy of Danzig, Jerry Only and company into a marketable tool for every wiener fourteen year old skater, the Misfits were a great band, no, they were more than that, they were legendary. Their brand of raw, gritty, B-grade horror movie punk that sounded like it was recorded in a garage somewhere is still some of the most captivating music I have heard. Glenn Danzig’s Elvis meets Jim Morrison drawl sucks you in with its magnetism. You would think that with such a basic and simple structure to all of their songs that you would get bored with them in about three seconds. I mean really, there’s no time changes, no solos, no soaring high notes, no guttural grunts, yet almost every song on this mammoth near one hundred song boxset still gives me that metal energy, that excitement that you get when you know you’re listening to truly wonderful music.

Technically, the Misfits have only released three full length CDs with Danzig as their frontman, Static Age, Walk Among Us, and Earth A.D. Despite this, there are literally dozens of songs from the Danzig era floating around, whether they are on collections, seven inch records, or a million singles. Since their unfortunate rise to popularity several years ago, there have been several collections of these songs, some shoddy, some well done. Me personally, I feel that this boxset is all you need, and maybe Walk Among Us, because these four discs contain everything from the very first recordings, two albums, a live cd, and even a two disc best of, so there is a lot of ground covered with this. The first disc is a simple compendium of the Collection CD’s, basically twenty five of the band’s hits. The classics keep coming one after another here, She, Horror Business, Night of the Living Dead, I Turned Into a Martian, Astro Zombies, Halloween, they just keep rolling off the track-list. Favourites for this reviewer include the campy Where Eagles Dare, the fun I Turned Into a Martian and the brooding and sinister Skulls. The few duds here include the pointless Halloween II which is just a meandering Latin chant and Braineaters, where you can enjoy the humour once or twice before it just gets annoying.

Disc two is another cobbled together collection of previously released discs, Legacy of Brutality which concentrates on the seventies era of the group, the live disc Evilive, and the remaining songs off Earth A.D. The early recordings sound very youthful and almost innocent, you can tell these are a bunch of kids especially on tracks like Some Kind of Hate and Hybrid Moments, although on the latter, even though the youthfulness is blatantly obvious, this is in my opinion one song that captures everything that one can say to describe the Misfits. Brooding, almost a bit popish, yearning, with a great vocal deliver by Danzig. Evilive is one big auditory mess of random noise. It sounds like it was recorded in someone’s jacket pocket at the show. There’s no nice way to say it but this live recording sucks and I skip it every single time. As we come to the end of the second disc with the tracks off Earth A.D. we are greeted with another different side of the band. Gone are the campy and fun times, instead what we have is bitter, angry and violent speed metal that despite the terrible production, this shows the Misfits becoming a metal band. Sad to say, this was their swansong, at least it was a respectable one.

Disc three is the collectors’ meat; this has some real rarities included. A CD chock full of studio outtakes, many of them unknown, this contains the band’s earliest recordings of Cough, Cool and She, recorded with Danzig playing his piano through a fuzz box while singing over them. Although every song on this particular segment of the box is not hard to find, these are the only versions of them out there. Take for instance, Where Eagles Dare, there are three versions on this disc alone yet each is vastly different from the other. One’s on steroids, the other on speed, and the other one sounds like the normal version albeit with a bit different vocals from Danzig. The last and final disc is the rest of the songs from the Static Age sessions and these include three of their calling cards, Last Caress, We Are 138, and Bullet.

After Glenn left, the Misfits still made music with a new singer. While many purists eschew the new Misfits I gave them a shot and I really enjoyed their comeback album American Psycho. It’s too bad everything after that was limp though. As a memorial to the legacy of one of America’s great (former) underground legends, this boxset does a fine job in capturing the spirit and the magic that was the Misfits.

Ripped for the very darkest of nights when all the ghouls come out to play by Timebender. For your scariest party set list…gifted to rodent infested MP3 @ 320kbps

Misfits; Coffin Box

Disc One - Collection I & II

1.      She

2.      Hollywood Babylon

3.      Horror Business

4.      Teenagers From Mars

5.      Night Of The Living Dead

6.      Where Eagles Dare

7.      Vampira

8.      I Turned Into A Martian4

9.      Skulls

10.   London Dungeon

11.   Ghouls Night Out

12.   Astro Zombies

13.   Mommy, Can I Go Out & Kill Tonight?

14.   Die, Die My Darling

15.   Cough/Cool

16.   Children In Heat

17.   Horror Hotel

18.   Halloween

19.   Halloween II

20.   Hate Breeders

21.   Braineaters

22.   Nike-A-Go-Go

23.   Devil's Whorehouse

24.   Mephisto Waltz

25.   Rat Fink

26.   We Bite

Disc Two - Legacy Of Brutality /Evilive/Earth A.D.

1.      Static Age

2.      T.V. Casualty

3.      Hybrid Moments

4.      Spinal Remains

5.      Come Back

6.      Some Kinda Hate

7.      Theme For A Jackal

8.      Angelfuck

9.      Who Killed Marilyn?

10.   Where Eagles Dare

11.   She

12.   Halloween

13.   American Nightmare

14.   20 Eyes

15.   Night Of The Living Dead

16.   Astro Zombies

17.   Horror Business

18.   London Dungeon

19.   Nike-A-Go-Go

20.   Hate Breeders

21.   Devil's Whorehouse

22.   All Hell Breaks Loose

23.   Horror Hotel

24.   Ghouls Night Out

25.   We Are 138

26.   Earth A.D.

27.   Queen Wasp

28.   Devilock

29.   Death Comes Ripping

30.   Green Hell

31.   Wolfsblood

32.   Demonomania

33.   Bloodfeast

34.   Hellhound

Disc Three - Sessions

1.      Cough/Cool

2.      She

3.      Who Killed Marilyn?

4.      Where Eagles Dare

5.      Horror Business

6.      Teenagers From Mars

7.      Children In Heat

8.      Night Of The Living Dead

9.      Where Eagles Dare

10.   Vampira

11.   Violent World

12.   Who Killed Marilyn?

13.   Spook City USA

14.   Horror Business

15.   I Turned Into A Martian

16.   Skulls

17.   Night Of The Living Dead

18.   Astro Zombies

19.   Where Eagles Dare

20.   Violent World

21.   Halloween II

22.   20 Eyes

23.   I Turned Into A Martian

24.   Astro Zombies

25.   Vampira

26.   Devil's Whorehouse

27.   Nike-A-Go-Go

28.   Hate Breeders

29.   20 Eyes

30.   Violent World

Disc Four - Static Age

1.      Static Intro

2.      Static Age

3.      T.V. Casualty

4.      Some Kinda Hate

5.      Last Caress

6.      Return Of The Fly

7.      Hybrid Moments

8.      We Are 138

9.      Teenagers From Mars

10.   Come Back

11.   Angelfuck

12.   Hollywood Babylon

13.   Attitude

14.   Bullet

15.   Theme For A Jackal 

16.   Static Outro

 

Well…what brings you down here? Could it be because you guessed that I’d re-rip Walk Among Us? My OCD couldn’t handle the concept that one of Gods greatest 25 minutes of wax hasn’t been included in this outstanding Box Set!! I mean, What. The. Absolute. Fuck?!? Seriously…Take a couple of extra minutes and drop Walk Among Us into your music library, turn up the volume and click PLAY, you know that you won’t be disappointed. Ripped to MP3 @ 320kbps

T’Misfits; Walk Among Us

1.      20 Eyes

2.      I Turned Into A Martian

3.      All Hell Breaks Loose

4.      Vampira

5.      Nike A Go Go

6.      Hate Breeders

7.      Mommy, Can I Go Out & Kill Tonight (Live)

8.      Night Of The Living Dead

9.      Skulls

10.   Violent World

11.   Devils Whorehouse

12.   Astro Zombies

13.   Braineaters