Michale Graves

It’s a familiar face, albeit one decorated from ear to ear in fright makeup. Some of you may remember Michale Graves from the Misfits. Graves, from New Jersey, won the audition for lead singer in the mid-1990’s when that punk band came back from the near-dead following the departure of their original lead singer, a keyboardist named Glenn Danzig. Danzig went solo in a band under his own surname. Fans of the Misfits 2.0 seemed not to mind the change. Graves fit right in with the Misfits particular thing, which the music industry called horror punk. Graves contributed a few originals as well, including a strange but popular adolescent anthem titled “Dig up Her Bones”: Point me to the sky above / I can get there on my own / Walk me to the graveyard / Dig up her bones.

Born Michael Emanuel, Graves turned 43 this year. In his time as a musician, the ex-Marine has fronted many bands, including Marky Ramone’s Blitzkrieg, Gotham Road, and the Lost Boys. Halloween comes every day for Graves, who seems never to have outgrown what one critic called the “spooky greaser” look.

It’s a punk band. Short songs. Your basic violent drums pounding under cascades of rippling power guitars amplified to the point of oversaturation.

Graves told an interviewer once that exiting the Misfits (possibly the high-water mark in his career to date) was a story not unlike the one told in the Book of Job in the Old Testament. Graves is also on record saying that he thinks punk went mainstream and that punk music and the pierced-and-blue-mohawked lifestyle is suffering a midlife crisis of sorts. His remedy? To keep rocking the scary face and writing ambiguous and frightening songs that he can bellow over the punk blast from his band. And now, here he comes in October, right on time.