Misfits (band) - Style

Style

Each incarnation of the Misfits has made use of horror film and science fiction film-inspired themes and imagery, with makeup, clothing, artwork, and lyrics drawn from B movies and television serials, many from the 1960s and 1970s. Musically the band are often recognized as the progenitors of the horror punk subgenre and have drawn from punk rock, heavy metal, and 1950s rock and roll and rockabilly to inform their style. Rolling Stone describes them as "the archetypal horror-punk band of the late 1970s and early '80s", and they are considered icons in punk music and culture.

The early incarnations of the Misfits are associated with the hardcore punk movement of the early 1980s, though American Hardcore author Steven Blush notes that "though crucial to the rise of hardcore, were in fact in a league of their own...The Misfits delivered a hyper-yet-melodic assault based in 50/60s-style rock, taking the Buddy Holly/Gene Vincent foundation and making it nuclear." Jon DeRosa of Pitchfork Media describes how the band's sound was different from the punk rock coming out of New York at the time: "New York punk was just punk, simple and static. When Glenn started the Misfits, he mutated the punk sound and image into something darker and more sinister, a punk-metal hybrid that later found bloom in the quiet, boring suburbs of Oslo and the boggy backwaters surrounding Tampa. Punk belonged to the media/celebrity hubs of London and New York. Ghoul rock was for the kids in the suburbs where nothing ever happens." Andy Weller of the Necros recalls the band's transition from traditional punk rock in the late 1970s to hardcore in the early 1980s: "ou could hear it on the records. It went from this Ramones-type stuff, to nine months later, where they put out records that were so fast it's unreal." By the recording of Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood the band were playing faster, more aggressive material. According to Blush, "The Misfits' strengths as a hardcore group lay in non- attributes–melodic songs and larger-than-life-aura–but by the time of Earth A.D. Glenn was writing hyperspeed blasts that sounded very standard."

The new version of the Misfits launched by Jerry Only and Doyle in the 1990s had a style that was much more heavy metal than punk, an outgrowth of the brothers' experience with their short-lived Christian metal act Kryst the Conqueror. Reviewing American Psycho, Stephen Erlewine of Allmusic called the new incarnation "a kitschy goth-punk outfit that relies more on metal than hardcore", while Rolling Stone remarked that the band's new style blended "some old-style punk, a little metal and an occasional all-out thrasher." Greg Prato, reviewing the 2001 album Cuts from the Crypt, noted that "the latter-day Misfits are much more heavy metal based than in their earlier work – as their punk roots have all but been erased."