Danzig - Black Laden Crown

Published May 16 2017

*=Staff's pick	Black Laden Crown Eyes Ripping Fire Devil On Hwy 9 Last Ride The Witching Hour But A Nightmare Skulls & Daisies Blackness Falls Pull The Sun

Genre	Doom/Goth Metal	Glenn Danzig	Vocals
Tracks	9	Tommy Victor	Guitar
Running time	46 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	AFM Records	-	Bass
Release	May 26, 2017	Johnny Kelly	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboard
Producer	Glenn Danzig
Similar bands	-

A poor-quality production, a bad vocal performance that's sort of done 10 feet away from the mike and also pretty dull song material in general are three things that my thoughts return to each and every time that I listen to Danzig's newest construction Black Laden Crown.

Sonically it has a basement kind of feeling and I realize that the mix on his cover record Skeletons from late 2015 probably wasn't intentionally made to come out similar to the old times, as I remember that I was thinking about it back then, but rather just an effect of lack of ability to bring out a sufficient result. Black Laden Crown is very deficient in today's standards and I personally wonder how someone possibly could ever be attracted by such a blurry and shapeless sound that this record comprises.

Glenn Danzig's voice is indeed unique and always has been and it's very easy to recognize the characteristics of it immediately, but unquestionably his best days are over. His strength and power seem long gone and he struggles on a lot of sequences and aside from the very last song, Pull The Sun, he pretty much talks his way through the album rather than actually making an attempt to really sing.

The songs are to be found in the region of doom and goth metal and are generally slow and somber throughout the record. Here and there I am able to track some decent stuff, but my hopes for something lasting are shut down almost instantly every single time, because with a production like this I think it wouldn't matter in the end if the songs were totally awesome since the audio is so utterly bad and therefore it gets unbearable to listen to it after a while.