“Our peers – Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Green Day – see the honesty and they get it. A lot of people never will, but that’s not important”: These legendary horror-punk icons recorded their classic debut album in 1978. It took 18 years for it to be released

The Misfits are one of rock’s great cult bands, beloved by everyone from Metallica to Green Day. But the New Jersey band’s career got off to a false start when their debut album, Static Age, was shelved before it was released, only finally emerging in 1996, 18 years after it was recorded and 13 years after the band originally split. In 2015, bassist Jerry Only looked back over the making of an album that eventually came to be regarded as a classimetakl

New Jersey horror punk fiends the Misfits blazed a trail that nobody dared touch lest their fingers catch fire. Existing in their prime incarnation for five short years between 1978 and 1983, Only a clawful of singles and two full-length albums, 1982’s Walk Among Us and 1983’s fecklessly feral Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood, were unleashed before the band disintegrated.

But there was another album, made at the very start of the Misfits’ career. That record, a snarling explosion of B-movie-inspired punk titled Static Age, stands as one of the foundational US punk albums, up there with Black Flag’s Damaged and Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables.

Or it would have if it had been released at that time. Despite containing such devilocked diamonds as We Are 138, Bullet, Hybrid Moments, Last Caress and Attitude, no record label would touch it. As a result, Static Age languished on a shelf for 18 years, long after the original line-up had bitten the dust.

“We did Static Age with basically no money and some fuckin’ attitude,” says Misfits bassist and founder Jerry Only. “It wasn’t record company bullshit. It was real. We came up with something and we didn’t compromise.”

The Misfits began in Lodi, New Jersey, in early 1977. “April 18th,” says Jerry, scanning his encyclopaedic memory. “At the time, Glenn [Danzig, singer] was playing keyboards and I was good friends with the drummer, Manny [Martinez], who played on our first single in the summer of ’77.”

That single was Cough/Cool, backed with She, released on Danzig’s own Blank label. The band was unique in that they didn’t have a guitarist at the time.

“That summer, we were hanging out at [New York punk Mecca] CBGB,” says Jerry. “We saw the Ramones there and thought, ‘Hey, if we want to be on the cutting edge of this whole thing, we really need a guitar player.’ I asked a good friend of mine, Franché Coma – we played basketball together in school – if he wanted the job.”

The Misfits were outsiders in the Big Apple punk scene from the start. They were hicks from New Jersey, something they wore as a badge of honour. The music they were making was inspired by B-movie horror, trash culture and rock’n’roll. None of your fancy intellectualising here. Their early shows were absolutely bananas. Everything was played with the utmost brutality and the crowd became one disorganised pool of perspiring punters.

“In New York, there were bands like Television, Talking Heads and a lot of artsy-fartsy shit that didn’t have balls,” says Jerry. “Everyone was strung out on heroin and that wasn’t what I wanted to be, I didn’t want to be shooting dope or wearing my dad’s old clothes.”

By the end of 1977, they had replaced original drummer Manny with Mr Jim (Jim Catania to his ma and pa). Their only real source of income they had was the cash Jerry earned working in his family’s machine factory. But they were dealt a winning hand by fate. Or at least the negligence of the record industry.

Last Caress - YouTube

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“We were very fortunate because there was a band called Pere Ubu – who fit into that artsy-fartsy scene – and they were on Mercury Records, and that label wanted their own little independent label,” says Jerry. “They called it Blank. But we’d already put out Cough/Cool and She through the name Blank, so they wound up giving us money for studio time in exchange for the name.”

The Misfits entered Manhattan studio C.I. Recordings in January 1978. “They gave us about 20 hours of recording time, so we went in having written all the Static Age songs,” says Jerry. “Most things were done in the first take or two but we needed more time, so I came up with more money to keep the project going.”

Glenn Danzig’s subsequent high profile means that many think of him as the Misfits’ mastermind, but Jerry insists it was more collaborative than legend has it.

“Let’s think of the Misfits as a restaurant,” he says. “Glenn goes to the store and he comes to the restaurant with the meat and potatoes. Then he gives them to me. He brings in the main ideas, then I cook ‘em up – I’m the chef, y’know?

“I wrote the intro and outro to Astro Zombies, the beginning riff in Return Of The Fly, I worked on Hybrid Moments… Glenn came down with this poem and he goes, ‘Hey, check this out.’ I looked at it and I say, ‘Well, what key do you want it in?’ and he goes, ‘I want it in C.’ I just grabbed my bass, started playing a riff and that was Theme For A Jackal. Glenn wanted to hear it in C, but it didn’t exist until I started playing the riff.”

Static Age harbours some of the catchiest, most defiantly anarchic anthems the Misfits ever penned. Everything from the chunky basslines, repetitive choruses and lyrics of a horrific hue – provocation was the Misfits’ business, and business was good.

We Are 138 (C.I. Recording 1978) - YouTube

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“When we did Attitude, with the lines ‘I got some fuckin’ attitude’, nobody was saying ‘fuck’ every second word in 1978,” says Jerry. “Today, it’s like the colour blue or red. Back then, we were doing that to be socially obnoxious, I guess.

But that sounded like a kids’ cartoon next to the fantastically bad-taste lyrics of Last Caress. “I got something to say/I killed a baby today,” howls Danzig. “It doesn’t matter much to me/As long as it’s dead.” He doubles down on the second verse: “I got something to say/I raped your mother today/It doesn’t matter much to me/As long as she spread.” Even Jerry thought it was a bit much - when he fronted a later incarnation of the band in the 2000s, he refused to sing Last Caress

“I saw something on TV,” he says. “A couple in New Mexico raped, beat and starved their little girl to death – she was about six months old and a beautiful little baby, I saw a picture of her – and her name was Britney. And I thought, for Britney, I’m not gonna do that song any more.”

Jerry says the band were rightly proud of the finished album, button-pushing lyrics and all. “It was our first real studio experience, and it was amazing that we were able to do it in the time that we had,” he says. “Hybrid Moments is a kinda landmark song and Teenagers From Mars really set the pace. I remember the first poster that we made to play at Max’s in Kansas City. It had the Teenagers From Mars artwork. That show was February 27th. It was a good show.”

There was just one problem with Static Age. No label wanted to release it. “It still amazes me to this day,” laughs Jerry. “We talked to Chrysalis Records, who were doing Blondie, and they didn’t want it. We talked to Sire Records, who were doing the Ramones and Richard Hell, and they didn’t want it.”

Four of the Static Age tracks – Bullet, We Are 138, Attitude and Hollywood Babylon – appeared on 1978’s Bullet single, released via Danzig’s own label (now renamed Plan 9). Last Caress made it onto the following year’s Beware EP. But after Franché Coma and Mr Jim quit midway through a tour in 1980, Jerry and Danzig figured the Static Age album must be jinxed and shelved it, seemingly for good.

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The Misfits fell apart after a disastrous Halloween show in 1983. Several Static Age songs appeared in remixed form on various posthumous 80s compilations, but the original album remained a shadowy myth, heard only on rough bootlegs.

Post-Misfits, Danzig went on to form Samhain, which eventually mutated into his own eponymous band. Jerry and his brother Doyle Von Frankenstein – who joined the Misfits in 1980 – spent several years embroiled in litigation with their former singer. A battle over song rights was resolved in 1995, finally allowing Static Age, to be included as part of a boxset the following year.

“We listened to the tape of Static Age and just thought that it was fuckin’ brilliant!” says Jerry, who relaunched a Danzig-less Misfits in 1995 with Doyle and singer Michale Graves. We couldn’t understand how nobody got it back then!”

If people didn’t get it back then, they certainly did in subsequent years. Its songs have been covered by Guns N‘ Roses (Attitude), Refused (Bullet), Entombed (Hollywood Babylon) and, most famously, Metallica, who delivered Last Caress with the later Green Hell as an epic twofer on 1987’s The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited, instantly becoming the Misfits’ biggest cheerleaders.

And Static Age itself? It’s justly, if belatedly, been recognised as one of the all-time great US punk albums. When Jerry and Doyle reunited with Danzig under the Misfits name in 2016 for a show at that year’s Riotfest, they played seven songs from it. It may have taken 18 years and a lot of aggro to be released, but it remains the launchpad for everything the Misfits have done.

“This band was created on identity,” says Jerry. “We’re the Misfits. We don’t belong anywhere. As a result, our peers – Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Green Day, Volbeat – look at it, see the honesty and expression and they get it. A lot of people never will, but that’s not important.

Originally published in 2015. Updated April 2026