Samhain's Final Descent Album Art

Enter: Danzig

We’ve come to the final days of November, ready to cast off the previous month and embrace the changing of the calendar, and much in same vein of casting off, we’ve arrived at the last Samhain album, FINAL DESCENT.

Final Descent is Samhain shedding its rawer and foreboding punk energy and making way for the sultry, swaggering, sweaty, blues infused metal of what the Danzig band would be known for. Final Descent plays almost as a demo for the first self-titled Danzig album than it does as the final Samhain album. There’s even early versions of Danzig classics like “Twist of Cain” and “Possession,” and even a cover of “Trouble” a song that on this album is a rougher, dirtier version than what would later appear on the Danzig EP “Thrawl-Demonsweatlive” (what is with Danzig and combing words with “live”).

If’n I’m honest, I rarely listen to this album in the Samhain catalog, because it is practically a Danzig album and he’d perfect this sound on the Danzig band debut, but there are some good Samhain moments as well.

The thing about Samhain is they’re one of the last truly secretive bands that you have to go out of your way to find. Their music isn’t on any streaming service, the albums haven’t been repressed and the last time the music was reissued was in 2000 in their CD/VHS box set, which is how I came to actually hear most of the music, and see the subsequent reunion tour that followed.

I’m sure you know ways of hearing this music, and I’d highly recommend you do. Samhain is the weirdo, artsy, creepy, gross, middle child of Danzig’s musical career and it’s the one that deserves much more love.