Robbed hit 4/15/19 - Danzig's "Mother"...
from the EP Thrall: Demonsweatlive (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #43
This weeks "robbed hit" comes from the gothic metal band Danzig, named for its powerful and charismatic lead singer Glenn Danzig. Recruited by producer Rick Rubin in New York, Glenn assembled a band including bassist Eerie Von of Samhain, Chuck Biscuits of Black Flag, and guitarist John Christ. After a solo track on the Less Than Zero soundtrack, the band signed to Rubin's Def American label and released their self-titled debut album in 1988. The album reached the lower half of the Billboard 200 sales chart, while the track "Mother", written by Glenn, started even then to get noticed in the metal community in the original studio version...
The band continued to release records through the early 90s, with Danzig II: Lucifuge reaching the top half of the albums chart, and Danzig III: How The Gods Kill becoming their first to make the albums top-40 at #24 (to date their best ever ranking). In the spring of 1993, the band put out an EP, Thrall: Demonsweatlive, that included studio tracks as well as four live songs from a Halloween show in southern California. One of those live tracks was "Mother", which got a renewed push from showing up twice on the then-hot animated show Beavis & Butthead on MTV, who showed both the original and the live clips. In one of the earliest cases of "going viral", "Mother '93", the reissued single on demand that had live overdubs on the original, all of a sudden found itself a hit on rock radio, and then to an extent, in sales...
While "Mother '93" climbed to #17 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard magazine, spending six months on the list (26 weeks), the song stalled right under the pop Top-40 at #43 in March of 1994. Internationally, the single was a minor hit in the UK at #62, and Germany at #93.
On the momentum from the success of the EP and reissued single, Danzig recorded their next full-length album Danzig 4 which arrived in the fall of 1994. The single "Cantspeak" did manage to get to #39 on the Mainstream Rock list and #40 on the Modern Rock format chart, and the album was their second top-40 effort at #29. But even with this, the band went quickly into limbo, leaving Def American over royalties, and Biscuits, Von, and Christ quitting the group. Glenn pushed on hiring on new members including drummer Joey Castillo who stayed on for a few albums, but in general the lineup was like a revolving door ever since. Their 1996 album Blackacidevil, which featured a few tracks with Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains, but the set peaked right under the top-40 at #41 in Billboard. After a period of flailing for three lesser-received sets, the current line-up of Glenn, drummer Johnny Kelly, bassist Steve Zing, and guitar axe Tommy Victor has been pretty stable, after they proved themselves by returning to the albums top-40 in 2010 with Deth Red Saboath (#35). Their most recent effort, Black Laden Crown, hit #97 on the albums chart in 2017.
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Here's the band appearing on the Jon Stewart Show in 1994...
and here's the band live in 1992...
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