01. 20 Eyes
02. I Turned Into A Martian
03. All Hell Breaks Loose
04. Vampira
05. Nike-A-Go-Go
06. Hate Breeders
07. Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight? [live]
08. Night Of The Living Dead
09. Skulls
10. Violent World
11. Devil's Whorehouse
12. Astro Zombies
13. Braineaters

Happy Halloween!

Seeing as how another reviewing milestone of mine was happening so close to Halloween, I knew I'd have to celebrate the occasion with a deeper dive into a Misfits album proper, with the toughest of choices actually being picking which of the releases are the best fit for the occasion. I knew it would obviously have to be one from the Glenn Danzig era (some folks find their newer albums to be good too, please don't kid yourselves). Static Age is the earliest and has a lot of historical value, and it's postponed archival release does make for an interesting review, but it is way too straight-forward of a proper punk rock album compared to what came afterwards. 12 Hits From Hell is the even more obscure lost album, but with a lot of its songs eventually making it to Walk Among Us, it felt at least a bit redundant. Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood is the most hardcore punk (and, by extension, metal) leaning of the bunch, but that made it lose some of its specific Misfits sauce. Then when I checked Walk Among Us's page, I remembered that I actually staff picked this album for Halloween in the year of its 40th anniversary anyway. If fate brings me back to it, who am I to disagree.

Despite Walk Among Us being technically Misfits first record, the band's history starts way before 1982, with the band's first single being the surprisingly post-punk-ish Cough / Cool. Misfits, even aside from their aesthetic being so recognizable even outside their core fanbase, are mostly recognized for being the band most synonymous with the "horror punk" subgenre, but knowing that they've been at it since the year of Nevermind The Bollocks, Damned Damned Damned, and Marquee Moon does make me think that they don't get enough credit for being frontrunners for punk rock as a whole. A lot of it might be because their 1977-1981 period had only single and EP releases (Beware was one I had considered for a review subject), with proper albums like the aforementioned Static Age (recorded 1978) and 12 Hits From Hell (recorded 1980) being only released later as archival releases once the band received a lot more retrospective recognition. Even though Static Age had set up clear seeds of horror punk, it was only 12 Hits From Hell where the punk on the album fully embraced that nuance.

By the time Walk Among Us rolled around, Misfits have went through their fair share of lineup changes, with Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only the only (sorry) constant members, but newcomers Arthur Googy and Doyle already serving the longest stints a tertiary Misfits served until that point, with the latter especially becoming an iconic enough member in their own right to the point where Doyle rejoining the band in 2016 was comparatively as big of a deal as Glenn Danzig also doing so. As short lived as this incarnation was, with Googy leaving shortly after the album's release, it is arguably the most iconic of Misfits lineups.

As for the music itself, it is the exact sweet spot between the punk of Static Age and the hardcore of Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood, where the bits of harder hardcore are still noticeable (see "All Hell Breaks Loose" and "Mommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight"), but contrasted by a more melodic sense that makes Misfits sound like Misfits. From the doo-wop vocal melodies merged with Glenn Danzig's Elvis reminescent croons (an occasionally unbecoming obsession sounding like precursors to pop punk, to a slightly harsher version of Ramones' simplistic rock 'n' roll inspired riffs, with the chorus-focused songwriting maximizing the memorability of all of these songs.

Even though the songs are in a similar 1-2 minute range akin to the ones on Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood, with the only song over three minutes mark being "Hatebreeders", having that stronger melodic sense in songs that are equally blisteringly fast feels like a continuous dopamine hit, one where there's a certain kind of tongue-in-cheekness similar to the campiness of the horror it uses as inspiration. The silliness of some songs like "I Turned Into A Martian" or "Skulls" would've felt more eyebrow-raising if the songs weren't so short, which is why "Hatebreeders" feels like it is at least one chorus repetition too long.

Of course Walk Among Us is not necessarily the best Misfits album, and retrospectively we have access to various versions and compilations of their recorded stuff that's not bound by whatever trouble they had at the time in releasing their stuff. But Walk Among Us is the most Halloween-ready of Misfits' albums.

This has been yours' truly's 950th review.