While there probably isn’t a specific reason for his rejuvenation, Danzig has seemed to gain a second wind late in his career. He has fully embraced his past, reuniting with Doyle and playing Misfits songs, celebrating the anniversary of the first Danzig record, and playing Samhain’s debut album all the way through a year ago at Riot Fest. At the moment, it’s good to be Danzig. Possibly inspired by such looking back, he has released a project that he’s been mentioning on and off for years: a collection of covers entitled Skeletons (Evilive Records/Nuclear Blast Entertainment).

Danzig’s first album in five years, Skeletons documents the music that informed his adolescent and teenage years. With the exception of ZZ Top’s “Rough Boy,” these songs were released between 1964 and 1974, when Glen would have been 6- to 16-years-old. It’s been reported that it’s an homage to David Bowie’s covers record, Pin Ups, right down to the cover. Danzig takes on a wide variety of material—from obvious influences like Elvis Presley (“Let Yourself Go”) to unexpected songs like the closer, “Crying in the Rain,” originally done by The Everly Brothers—and it’s an interesting mental image to imagine him as a youngster rocking out to groups like The Young Rascals.

It’s an interesting album. There’s a super lo-fi feel on the first half of the record that comes off less like a stylistic production choice and more like he just got the boys together for some karaoke and let the tape roll. As a result, the opening songs seem especially characteristic, with his Elvis-esque ticks and other idiosyncrasies in abundance. But after he gets the requisite Black Sabbath cover (“N.I.B.”) out of his system, he seems to settle in a bit more. Throughout the record, he seems to be having a ball, resulting in moments where he kills it. Who knew that the theme to Satan’s Sadists would hit with such a gospel-infused fervor or that he’d make such a convincing crooner?

Accordingly, Skeletons is a departure from Danzig’s hard-rock leanings. He also took a different approach to making the album, manning the drums himself for half the album and also playing guitar, bass, and piano elsewhere. Self-produced, it feels and sounds like an intimate affair. The knee-jerk reaction is that it shouldn’t work, but it quickly draws you in, and even the vocal parts that could be over-the-top become endearing. It feels odd to call a Danzig record “fun,” but Skeletons is a charming, fun record that bodes well for latter day Danzig.