This was another album that my friend Andrew hooked me up with. I was obsessed with Metallica’s Garage Days EP (still am, to be honest) but had never heard any of the original versions of the songs on it (It’s a covers EP for those who don’t know). Andrew wasn’t having any of that and so a copy of Earth A.D. landed in my hands. And I just wasn’t ready for it.
Misfits are probably only famous for Glenn Danzig and those Metallica covers, but A.D is an absolute belter of an album. The original record is 15 minutes long and doesn’t take a breath in those 15 minutes. The version I had, has the Die, Die My Darling single on it and adds another staggering 6 minutes to the run time. This album does a lot of things in that 21 minutes but I assure you, fucking around is not one of them.
What we get is an album that is somehow punk as fuck while being metal as fuck, at a time when that wasn’t just unheard of, it was almost unthinkable. That being said, there are some problems with the record. Some of the lyrics, well, aged badly isn’t the right term because they were always bullshit. I’ve no problem with something like Die, die, die my darling, because Misfits are a horror band and so go for it, but the line “I raped you mother today”? Yea, that can get stuffed.
This album sounds like it was recorded in a shed that was dropped down a well. Even for something that was recorded for no money in 1983 it sounds rough, but it really doesn’t hold the album back in any way. This record should sound noisy, trashy and rough as hell, anything else and there’s a good chance that this album wouldn’t work.
The Misfits influence is pretty incredible seeing as they were no one when they first came out. Metallica covered three of their songs, and Dave Lombardo (Slayer’s first drummer) played with the band when they reformed. I think it’s pretty safe to say that you can hear how the speed and aggression of Earth A.D is part of Thrash metal’s DNA.
So that’s the Misfits. Twenty one minutes of silly punk fury that’s as catchy as it’s punchy. An album that disappeared at the time to only get its due years later. I’ve never been able to get into anything else the band did, but I don’t need to. This is pure magic all on its own.
https://lynkify.in/song/green-hell/58MQLx0N
The ways of exile 