REVIEW: Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein - The Craufurd Arms - Wolverton

Well here we are at the pub - The Craufurd Arms Hotel in Wolverton to be precise, waiting for a punk rock legend.

Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein, the be-devil-locked powerhouse guitar player from one of my all time favourite bands Misfits is about to come on stage.

The Misfits literally invented their own style of punk rock, and have been going in one form or another since the 1970s.

And Misfits is more than just a band nowadays, it’s a Horror Business all its own. I think you’d be hard pressed not to at least recognise the band’s iconic skull logo, even if you didn’t know its edgy roots.

This is a quite a difference from the last time I saw Doyle play, last September in Chicago when they played in front of literally thousands of people - their first time as an original line-up of Doyle, bass player Jerry Only and lead singer Glenn Danzig since the early 1980s after years of acrimony.

This to put it mildly is a more intimate show, and I’m still getting over the sheer bizarre juxtaposition of seeing Doyle’s giant tour bus parked outside the Wolverton pub!

But the The Craufurd Arms is a pub like no other, and looking at the line-up board inside the door for the coming month, it’s clear that Doyle is not the only legendary face to grace the other side of Milton Keynes anytime soon.

So now to the gig, and it’s not by any means a tribute to Doyle’s Misfits roots, he’s here with a fresh new band and they are absolutely wild.

Lead singer Alex ‘Wolfman’ Story is a sweaty mess in all the right ways, and provides the perfect vocal for the raft of new tracks from Doyle’s Abominator album.

Stand out track for me was Drawing Down The Moon, which I actually found myself humming in the car on the way home, despite having never heard it before.

But of course there had to be some Misfits in the mix, and Alex’s vocal makes this pretty special.

Green Hell, Last Caress, Skulls, Die Die My Darling and my favourite Astro Zombies all feature in the set.

Alex is funny too, “This is a love song” he declares before pretty much every track, then launching into the fiendish horror punk renditions.

“This is Doyle, he used to be in a band called Kiss, and this is a song from their album Love Gun” he tells us - before another track.

The night drew about 70/100 people I would say, but punk rock aficionados who didn’t go certainly missed out. It was a great way to see one of our true legends, and I’m so glad I went on this Ghouls Night Out!

You can find out more about Doyle, and check out tour dates at www.officialdoyle.com

Related topics: