intothewellsabyss

Jun 17, 20237 min read

𝗗𝗮𝗻𝘇𝗶𝗴 — 𝗜𝗜𝗜: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗱𝘀 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹 (1992)

Updated: Jun 18, 2023

𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐑𝐘𝐏𝐓𝐒 - 𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐀𝐋𝐁𝐔𝐌 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐒 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐃 𝐑𝐎𝐂𝐊 & 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐘 𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐋…

31 years ago this week, “Sistinas” showed us “How the Gods Kill” when we were feeling “Godless” over a “Dirty Black Summer”!

On June 16, 1992, Danzig released their third full-length studio Danzig III: How the Gods Kill via Def American Recordings. It was reissued in 1998 by Def American's successor, American Recordings.

Background:

How the Gods Kill was a departure from the previous Danzig albums and featured more of a Doom and Gothic Metal sound. Bassist Eerie Von considers the album to be Danzig's best, with the band at its peak and able to record most of the basic tracks for each song within a couple of takes.

While the first two Danzig albums were produced by Rick Rubin, on Danzig III the singer took control. Change was inevitable...

"I kept some of the stuff that Rick (Rubin) did because he did a lot of cool stuff on the first record. On the second record, he was kind of MIA," he notes, leading Danzig to take on producing Danzig III: How the Gods Kill himself. "Rick executive produced it, but he was not really at the sessions. I had a certain sound in my head that I wanted it to sound like, and that's what I went for."

"Rick has a kind of very stripped-out, clean approach. Some of the stripped-down stuff I like, but I like it a little noisier. It's probably a little more atmospheric because of stuff I added back in that maybe Rick would tend to take out. Sometimes Rick wants it very dry and in your face. We added some of the more atmospheric stuff — like timpani and things like that — on the record. How the Gods Kill has got a guitar line that I wrote that's very hypnotizing." — Glenn Danzig to Revolver Magazine

Guitarist John Christ noted how a lot of time was spent perfecting the guitar sounds for the album. For the quieter moments on the songs Anything, Sistinas and How the Gods Kill, Christ used a Fender Strat previously played by Jeff Beck.

"He was going through lots of different amps. He didn't like this, didn't like that," Danzig recalls of Christ, adding that pushing him "to be a little bluesier and less music school was the key. John did a really good job on the record." — Glenn Danzig on John Christ

The title song How the Gods Kill concerns a search for knowledge and an understanding of oneself. According to John Christ;

“That was a real tricky song to write and record. It has so many level jumps and changes in the sound of the guitar. I had to go from a very soft section to a very loud section to an in-between section. If you listen closely, you can hear a hissing noise in the vocals in the intro because we were using a real noisy vocal preamp. We tried everything to get rid of it, but Glenn's performance was so good that we decided to leave it - the mood was just right.”

"It's really about coming to the realization that you can be your own god and you don't need other gods," he explains, "and how so many different gods end up making people kill. A lot of people don't want to think about how many different gods there are in the world that people worship, and how many of them force people to be destructive and murderous." — Glenn Danzig on the albums title track

The song Sistinas was written during a drum track recording session, as John Christ recalled;

“We were in the studio recording drum tracks, and while we were on a break Glenn picked up my guitar and started getting an idea for a song. Then I came up with a little chorus part, and in about an hour or two we had the basic structure of the song. He wanted it to have a Roy Orbison type of vibe with some timpani and keyboards. We used an old Fender amp with a vibrato on it, and we cranked up the vibrato to get those really big chords - it was perfect for that song.”

Opening track Godless is about feelings of frustration caused by organised religion. Heart of the Devil was the first song on the album to be performed live by the band, during the European “Lucifuge” tour in 1991. Later in the same year, it was confirmed that the tracks Bodies and Do You Wear the Mark had been written for the album. Blues legend Willie Dixon had agreed to guest on the track Heart of the Devil, but died before the recording session was scheduled.

The Avant-garde Metal band Lux Occulta recorded a cover version of Heart of the Devil for their 1998 EP “Maior Arcana: The Words That Turn Flesh into Light”.

When the album was released in the summer of 1992, Glenn Danzig told Revolver magazine that he recognized it as a creative step forward, and a further refinement of the band's sound. Then he says that his agent informed the group their next Southern California gig would be at the 16,000-capacity Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Orange County — which Revolver states is a huge step up from their last local show at the 3,000-capacity Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

"At that time, Irvine Meadows was relegated to bands like Bon Jovi and Whitesnake and big pop bands. For a band like Danzig, an underground metal band, it was unheard of going in and headlining the show. But we sold it out."

"When we were on tour for the record, we'd be in a mall and you'd see your record at one of those mall record shops, which was unheard of! Normally, you'd see a Danzig record at a record shop that catered to metalheads, punkers, alternative music."

"That was our biggest album! I was realizing as an artist what I really wanted to do, where I wanted to go and I'm trying to add different elements in, so it's not the same old record over and over, you know?" — Glenn Danzig to Revolver Magazine

The tracks How the Gods Kill and Dirty Black Summer became popular and remain a permanent fixture in the band's set list.

Album Art & Layout:

The album's cover is a 1976 painting called “Meister und Margeritha” (The Master and Margarita) by famous Swiss artist H.R. Giger (R.I.P. 2014), named after Mikhail Bulgakov's novel “The Master and Margarita”.

For the album cover, Giger modified the original painting slightly, covering "the Master's" erect penis with a dagger bearing his interpretation of the Danzig skull symbol. H.R. Giger's version of the Danzig skull was later used on T-shirts and as the cover art for the Dirty Black Summer single.

Like Danzig's other three albums with the original lineup, this album was issued a Parental Advisory sticker, later complete with a "strong language" warning, despite the total absence of profanity. In some markets, the earliest pressings were issued in a CD longbox. While s special limited edition box set, featuring a long cardboard box with a "three dimensional" embossed version of the H.R. Giger artwork was also released. It came with a VHS tape, featuring the uncensored version of the How the Gods Kill promotional music video. The CD insert booklet had a photograph of the band on the cover, rather than the H.R. Giger artwork.

Promotional Music Videos:

Music videos were released for the songs How the Gods Kill, Dirty Black Summer, Bodies and Sistinas.

Glenn Danzig directed all videos, aside from Dirty Black Summer, which was directed by Anton Corbijn.

The How the Gods Kill music video appeared on Beavis and Butt-Head, in the episode "Scientific Stuff". All music videos from the album are featured on Danzig's “Archive de la Morte” DVD.

A live performance of the song Left Hand Black has also been released.

A documentary was filmed during the making of How the Gods Kill, though it currently remains unreleased.

Critical Reception:

How the Gods Kill received high praise at the time of its release and is still well respected among fans and critics today. Although, some were negatively critical of the album.

AllMusic wrote, "Danzig's third album continues to expand the band's musical range" and called it "arguably the definitive Danzig album".

Rolling Stone wrote, "Danzig the group has evolved, in the course of three albums, into a resourceful, tightly meshed unit...Danzig embodies the best in contemporary hard rock while displaying an originality that transcends genres... Rock is alarmingly short of visionaries these days; Danzig is the genuine article".

Hit Parader, while saying that the album is too unrelenting to cause Danzig to break into the mainstream, wrote, "They deserve whatever recognition they get simply for having the guts to play metal the way it was meant to be played."

Trouser Press called it "a roaring slab of leathery rock that isn't overly troubled by his lyrical obsessions", highlighting Do You Wear the Mark and Heart of the Devil as examples of Glenn Danzig's interest in dark topics. The review also describes Danzig's "confidence (or hubris, same difference here)" in Sistinas, which is performed "as a ridiculous croony gothic ballad". The review concludes, "Economical and efficient, an organic blend of vocals and instrumental intensity, How the Gods Kill is great bleak fun."

Bob Mack of Spin called the band "too goofy to be taken seriously as regular rockers but not goofy enough for the cartoon Metal crowd" and wrote that the lyrics to Heart of the Devil, instead of sending a shiver down his spine, caused him to roll his eyes. He complimented Left Hand Black and called Sistinas the "best Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark song since OMD's 1984 LP Junk Culture".

Daina Darzin of Request Magazine praised the album for its "solidly crafted melodies" and "lush, malevolent power", along with Glenn Danzig's "wonderfully expressive, opulent voice" and the "spectral mystique" added by John Christ's guitar work. Writing about the lyrics she stated that Danzig "has the courage to go for fatalistic grandeur and gets away with it, for the most part", citing lyrics to Heart of the Devil as an exception.

Pitchfork described it as the "album that lived up to the mighty image he'd built" and said later albums did not live up to this.

In a career retrospective, Cam Lindsay of Exclaim! rated it Glenn Danzig's second best album.

Links to Artists, Albums, and Music Videos:

Click this link to listen to “How the Gods Kill” via Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/danzig-iii-how-the-gods-kill/1440900777

Click this link to watch the official music video for “Bodies”: https://youtu.be/6-LUuAn5Obc

Click this link to watch the official music video for “How the Gods Kill”: https://youtu.be/Ca9OX9tFeEs

Click this link to watch the official music video for “Dirty Black Summer”: https://youtu.be/kREle_uGckw

Click this link to watch the official music video for “Sistinas”: https://youtu.be/Y_jaDXmNAKk

Click here to see footage of Glenn Danzig when he was a guest on MTV’s HeadBangers Ball with host Riki Rachtman (1992) + MTV’s Dirty “Black Summer” contest commercial: https://youtu.be/DT2bcCyfbNo

Click this link to follow Danzig on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Danzig/

Click this link to follow DANZIG - 7th House on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danzig7thhouse

Note: The reviews shared here are for historical reference. The views and opinions expressed within are not always supported (in full or in part) by Into the Wells. — E.N. Wells