When MISFITS Walked The Earth

 

It really wouldn't be Halloween without some Misfits music, would it?  There was truly nothing like them.  One measure of the extent of their influence is the number of tribute albums and cover songs that they have inspired.  It's a worldwide phenomenon, as you can see from this list.

The album Walk Among Us found me at the perfect age.  I was 16 years old in 1982, in the throes of adolescent awkwardness and emotional turmoil.  Turning into a Martian, a zombie, an undead creature with 20 eyes in its head and an insatiable appetite for blood -- Glenn Danzig's tales of possession, transformation, lust, revulsion and "murderlation" resonated in ways that I couldn't articulate.  High school was miserable.  Sex was both an obsession and a mystery.  The world of the 80's seemed to be on the brink of nuclear annihilation.  Eating brains sounded better than applying for a job or taking a college entrance exam.  

Part of the band's brilliance was that it separated everything that was great about heavy metal from everything that seemed excessive and cliched.  It did the same with punk, by decoupling its primitive speed and rage from its self-righteous politics and insularity.  The songs on Walk Among Us are both foreboding and inviting.  "Come on to the violent world with me," Danzig sings.  "Come alive in the house that screams."  And it was so much fun to sing along.

Everything that was appealing about horror movies (their fascination with death, sex, pain, fear, evil and otherness) seemed to be personified in the Misfits' appearance and embodied in their songs.  The lure of forbidden knowledge.  The end of childhood and innocence.  The transformation of the human body as both an unwanted betrayal and a source of monstrous power.

Today I'm sharing two sets of Misfits covers.  One follows the trackist of Walk Among Us and Earth A.D.  The other set includes the songs collected on Legacy Of Brutality, plus more of the singles.  The music is performed in a variety of styles, including surf, ska, jazz, and rockabilly (as well as punk and metal).  The artists include both big names and unknowns.  Maybe a Misfits cover band is playing somewhere near you tonight.  May it always be so.