Review: Michale Graves: Acoustic and Electrifying

Back in high school, I had a walkman and a small music collection that consisted almost entirely of Danzig, Samhain and Misfits tapes. I listened to that music every day, walking between classes at school, trudging through the snow on the way home from school, lying on my bedroom floor after school. I listened to it so much it’s now burned into my brain. I don’t even need to play it anymore to hear it.

If someone had told me then that there would come a day when I would go see an acoustic show by the singer who would replace Glenn Danzig in my favorite band and that I would like it better than a show by Danzig himself, I probably would have flipped out something serious.

It’s funny how stuff works out. After Danzig’s lackluster Blackest of the Black show a couple weeks back, Michale Graves wouldn’t have had to play half as well as he did at Big V’s to come out on top.

There’s something completely honest about Graves sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar and pouring his heart into his horror punk tunes. His performance was as unpretentious as a performance can get. Saying it was refreshing would be a ridiculous understatement.

Interestingly, out of all the horror punk bands out there trying to cop the Misfits style, Graves comes the closest to demonstrating a sincere understanding of Danzig’s Misfits era lyrics. In those old songs, Danzig never wrote straight narratives. He juxtaposed one bizarre image against the next, creating a feeling of true horror that no lyrics before or after have been able to create. “When do creatures rape your face/Hybrids opened up the door.”

Graves takes the same approach. It’s best exemplified in the song “Casket,” in which he sings, “The monkey bars love lightning/And the slide takes me away/From Evil Looks/And bloodshot eyes.”

Like Danzig in the Misfits, Graves often couples his words with hauntingly beautiful melodies. The tension between the surreal, sometimes disturbing lyrics and the melodies is a big part of what makes the music of both singers so compelling.

For years, Danzig has been promising to do exactly what Graves is doing now. He has talked again and again about doing an acoustic project with just himself on vocals and Jerry Cantrell on guitar. Prior to the Blackest of the Black tour, he did a bunch of interviews and mentioned that he would be doing an acoustic song during the shows. Despite reports of acoustic guitars being ready to go and acoustic songs crossed off of set lists grabbed from the stage by enthusiastic fans, he has kept his shows electric. Unfortunately, at least during his stop at the Myth, his show wasn’t half as electrifying as Graves’ show was.

(Michale Graves played at Big V’s in St. Paul, Minnesota on 11/1/08)