Music

Concert review: Danzig and Pennywise bring their heavy sound (and mosh pits) to Brooklyn Bowl

Image
The Dark Lord of Rock doesn’t allow photographers at his concerts (so dramatic), so here’s a shot of Pennywise.
Edison Graff, Stardust Fallout/Kabik Photo Group

Three stars

Danzig with Pennywise July 31, Brooklyn Bowl.

Glenn Danzig may not be as menacing as he once was, thanks to various online memes (“I hate the f*cking internet,” he said at his band’s concert this past Friday) and the simple ravages of time, but when he took the Brooklyn Bowl stage with his eponymous band, he could still captivate an eager crowd and inspire mosh pits and crowd surfing. And despite his reputation for being a bit short-tempered, he kept his cool through technical difficulties, with loud microphone feedback drowning out most of his vocals on opener “SkinCarver” and then continuing intermittently for the rest of the show.

With the kinks mostly worked out, Danzig and his latest bandmates, especially guitarist Tommy Victor, sounded solid on a range of classic-era metal songs, including “Am I Demon,” “Her Black Wings,” “Twist of Cain” and main-set closer “Mother.” A couple of times during the set, Danzig asked the audience to choose which album they wanted to hear a song from, and the only options were the band’s first four albums. The set did include a handful of more recent songs, although the four-song stretch of songs from a forthcoming covers album kind of killed the momentum. No matter how often Danzig’s voice gets compared to Elvis Presley’s, hearing him barrel through a metal version of Presley’s “Let Yourself Go” was not flattering.

SoCal punk rockers Pennywise might at first have seemed like an odd choice to open a Danzig tour, but their sound is just as heavy in its own way (they inspired more intense mosh pits), and singer Jim Lindberg told the audience that when the band was starting out in the early ’90s, there were only two contemporary popular albums they found worth listening to, one by Bad Religion and one by Danzig. Even if Danzig is no longer particularly intimidating, he’s still inspiring.

Share
Top of Story