Danzig- Black Laden Crown, A Review (2017)

Danzig- Black Laden Crown, A Review (2017)

By: Ghost Writer

Rock N Roll Animal

Black Laden Crown is Danzig biggest close up towards the world of Doom Metal, the slow pieces certainly help singer Glenn Danzig to get a better spot for his voice to be heard, as on the opening title track where the overall slowness give us a chance to appreciate fully Glenn's Jim Morrison like vocal delivery, musically there's also some weird things going on, as Glenn´s longtime collaborator Prong's Tommy Victor not only manages to capture perfectly every riff Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi ever played, he is also capable of developing a piercing solo style that also becomes an important asset on the whole recording, while Victor consciously stays away from the baroque nature of his Prong riffing, he is capable here of creating a very different guitar style suited exactly for Danzig dark wanderings, Eyes Ripping Fire is a perfect example of it, just as his Iommi like wall of riffs rises, he is able to deliver spine chilling guitar leads mixing the devilish blues guitar lines of old delta blues along the maniacal style of someone like Slayer's Kerry King without become a speed demon, helping the music reach really deep dark  and macabre moments, giving Danzig music a big dose of excitement that Glenn by his own is unable to achieve.

Devil on Hwy 9 sounds like the leading single from the record, a powerful and monolithic work on the rhythm section with Victor flying high again, it's rocking Jim Morrison from the grave, sadly, gone is the lush Elvis from the grave thing, instead of it we got Morrison's road weary LA Woman voice as Glenn sounds incapable of keeping his voice in the amazing shape it had a couple of years ago, still sounding commanding at times but unable to achieve the deep darkness of his early solo efforts, although on Last Ride he tries but Victor's drilling guitars simply can't be tamed by Glenn and the piece that sounds like a slowed down version of a T Rex tune simply falls apart becoming an instrument of Victor's shredding impulses, and while The Witching Hour is nearly epic musically speaking, it should have been left as an instrumental track sounding at times close to the legendary War Pigs.

As the record goes by, Doom Metal keeps dominating the mix, but there's certain missing depth that leaves the songs nearly empty, lacking enough power and with riffs sounding at times embarrassing familiar, perhaps the monolithic performance along Glenn's debilitated crooning is not a good formula as most of these songs sound a bit too much tired, skeletal lacking flesh, work and underproduced, Black Laden Crown is definitely not a complete failure with tunes like Blackness Falls working at some level while the closing track Pull the Sun shows some promise not found anywhere else on the record, Black Laden Crown makes think a lot that there's still a lot of potential waiting to be exploited on Danzig, but also there's some kind of dogmatic logic that seems to be holding Danzig and Victor partnership back, I was very impressed when Circle of Snakes came out, it became my favorite late Danzig album but since then something was lost and it's still missing here, Glenn must hurry up to find it.