Misfits – American Psycho (1997)

September 11, 2020

How it’s taken me this long to address any Graves-era Misfits I’m not entirely sure. Growing up however, before I become an obsessive music collecting freak, the 90s Misfits albums were easily my favourite output by the band. Afraid not of heavier music, I instead found them better to listen to due to the incredibly awful recording qualities on a lot of the Danzig stuff. I won’t enter the endless pit of comparing Danzig and Graves, but will just quickly say a few words about this release.

The riffs by Doyle are on point. As ever, you should not expect complex compositions; the burly axeman seems to use his guitar as a weapon rather than as an instrument, but there is a decent melody present in a lot of these tunes. Michale Graves himself wrote a fair amount of these tracks, and credit is deserved there also, of course.

Generally, I find American Psycho to have a faster pace than Famous Monsters, which falters a bit in the final third. Stick around also for the secret track, “Don’t Open Til Doomsday”, which is one of Graves’ best cuts with the Misfits.

(Edit: In light of Graves’ recent Proud Boy buttfuckery I will never support him again on one of his – admittedly floundering – live tours, but American Psycho remains a solid album, that I cannot deny)