Zone 451: Echo Rotations   Jan. 1996
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The Misfits
Collection II
(Caroline - 1996)
Reviewed by Nick Sagos

   Fanatical collectors, attemping to compile the definitive
Misfits discography, soon learn the lessons others that have gone
broke before them already know. It's expensive, it's
pathological, and it's impossible. Despite seventeen brave years
of trying, Glenn Danzig beat us to it. The Misfits, was
essentially one man's artistic vehicle, frontman Glenn Danzig's.
With Collection II, he begins to lift a little more of the shroud
of his self-imposed silence which cloaks a unique musical and
non-musical legacy. Collection II is intended as an addendum to
the Danzig compiled Colection I, that appeared in 1988. The album
is twenty remastered tracks of rarities again all supervised by
Danzig. Mainly, it's selections (with lyrics) from the long out
of circulation 7-inch's, stuff from the extremely rare Beware LP,
and demo/alternate versions, deriving mostly from their
previously released Earth A.D. album. The sound is excellent. The
Misfits have remained musically relevant, because of their
music's ageless passion. Every element, in any Misfits' song, is
there intentionally to invoke reaction. The song's lyrics, music,
vocals, feedback, noise, are all there for the same reason.
They're all there to intimidate. The purpose of all their songs
is the same . . . to bayonet you with an emotionally drenched
point.
   From their birth, The Misfits pulled off a kind of art that in
pinciple is impossible for a punk band. During their career they
liked to add insult to injury, on and off the stage, and did it
effectively. The Misfits achieved an artistic calibre and punk
bands aren't supposed to have "calibre". They wrote a total of
104 songs. Every one of them, was a straight mainline of hardcore
punk. With stats like that, each track on Collection II starts
becoming just another bone in the bucket, and another case in
point. Collectors be warned, some stuff off this album may
reappear on Caroline's authoritative Box Set being released on
February 27. Evil Ive's grinnin' . . . and that says it all.