''Danzig Sings Elvis'' is the twelfth studio album by American
heavy metal band
Danzig. It was released on April 17, 2020, through
Cleopatra Records
Cleopatra Records is an American independent record label based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1992 by Brian Perera. The record label has since grown into a family of labels, including Hypnotic Records, Purple Pyramid Records, ...
. The album consists of cover versions of tracks originally recorded by
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
.
"
Always on My Mind" was released as the album's sole
single
Single may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Single (music), a song release
Songs
* "Single" (Natasha Bedingfield song), 2004
* "Single" (New Kids on the Block and Ne-Yo song), 2008
* "Single" (William Wei song), 2016
* "Single", by ...
on July 29, 2020. The single was released on 7-inch vinyl as well as via digital and streaming formats and features an alternate vocal version of "
Loving Arms
"Loving Arms" is a song written by Tom Jans and first recorded and released by Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge as a duet in 1973 on their album ''Full Moon''.
It was covered by Dobie Gray shortly after, and then by a number of artists the ...
" as its
B-side
The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record company ...
.
Critical reception
''Danzig Sings Elvis'' was met with mixed reviews from critics. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an average score of 60, based on five reviews.
In a review for
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...
' Mark Deming noted "While
lennDanzig doesn't sound exactly bad here, the harder he tries to sound like Presley, the more he misses the target, and the grain of his voice and the occasional moments where he's reaching for notes he doesn't quite have make it clear he shouldn't have waited until he was 64 years old to do this, when his voice isn't nearly as nimble as Presley's in his prime.
Also touching on the quality of the vocal delivery,
Amanda Petrusich of
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...
said "
s vocals are pleasantly imperfect—still thick and round, but a little bit frayed at the edges, and not in an especially deliberate way, sometimes Danzig's voice gets a little wobbly, as if it were late at night, and maybe he has been drinking" but went on to praise the structures of the songs: "most of the arrangements are faithful to the originals. Danzig doesn't transform any of these tracks into
speed-metal
Speed metal is an extreme metal, extreme Music subgenre, subgenre of heavy metal music that originated in the late 1970s from new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) roots.K. Kahn-Harris, ''Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge'' (Berg P ...
songs or fiddle around with the melodies".
Track listing
Charts
References
{{Authority control
2020 albums
Danzig (band) albums
Cleopatra Records albums
Elvis Presley tribute albums