DANZIG

Key Club, December 29

A prime Danzig experience can be biblically elemental, violent, contradictory, poetic. Absurd to some, Glenn Danzig’s brow-knit hardness and grievous sensuality are really about survival: You can’t fight through the dark unless you notice that the light went out.

So he’s strong, and he lifts you. Never one to wallow in past glories, Danzig paraded muscular armaments from recent years, including a fearsome "SkinCarver" ("All the world must die!"), a corpse-prodding "Black Mass," the burdened dirge "Skull Forest" and a blindingly inspirational "Black Angel, White Angel," confident in the sanded resilience his versatile voice has acquired with time. Bevan Davies and Jerry Montano were worthy punishers on drums and bass; Tommy Victor’s jigsaw/noise solo on "1,000 Devils Reign" was typical of his knightly axmanship. Of course, when Danzig polled the hell-bent crowd (younger than you’d expect) on whether they craved new stuff or old, the response was predictable. "Could you let it go?" he crooned on a dynamic "How the Gods Kill" (1992). No, and the stallionlike unmanageability of the classic sing-along "Her Black Wings" was further reason to cling.

Metal is big now, but since punk is bigger, the loudest huzzahs arose for the entry of Doyle, Danzig’s ’80s sidekick in the Misfits. Apollonian of stature and blank of visage, the near-naked and dog-collared guitar chopper wheeled blindly around the stage to the rampaging rhythms of "Die Die My Darling," "Hate Breeders" and a satisfying selection of other Misfits nuggets before Danzig "put him back in his coffin." The mob went nuts.

Overamped run-throughs of the turn-of-the-’90s howlers "Twist of Cain" and "Mother," plus a Doyle reprise, merely gilded the funeral lily of the best Danzig show I’ve seen. It wasn’t just the clarion club sound, it was the energy and (dare I say) the warmth and even joy. Don’t expect Danzig’s "retirement" to be permanent.