Danzig at the Nokia Theater on the Saturday before Halloween + two backstage passes, sounds pretty rad right? Well that was the situation for me last night with my dear friend J– who worships at the altar. We are divided - I believe Trent the lord of middle American darkness, perhaps because I do not body build. This might be a chicken and egg thing.

Standing on the balcony looking into the not sold out crowd for the show, I watched the pit roar for "Mother" and a sea of bodies sway to take its impact. As always, this front area and pit were nearly all men, mostly white, and disproportionately bald or extremely long-haired: no middling mops for Danzig fans. A metal show, in short. Now I have come to realize that I really like certain parts of metal, but definitely not the Morrison-croon pseudo blues of Danzig. On this evening I was ready to welcome at least the visceral punch of extreme sound and helter skelter of guitar, but was dismayed by horrendous mixing of the group, the oddly terrible guitarwork of Todd Youth and Danzig's own clipped range of vocal inflection. The ensemble was so thin and drums mixed so high it sounded like a stadium rock soundcheck in a supperclub.

Refugees lined the bar downing $9 mixed drinks, others stood watching the jumbotron replay in the lobby. It felt like a desperate foodcourt at the goth mall of America. Everyone was in black, one in corpse-paint, many in Hot Topic-sold naughty girl costumes. Lovely and depressing, I am drawn to these situations.

The encore was great-ish, at least, for Doyle - a truly wonderful entertainer where Danzig (did I mention his arm was in a sling from an accident, making him look like a wounded beast) seemed more fixed in his posing routine. For the final song Glenn invited a friend and his young son onto the stage, breaking the frame of fantasy further – what is it when our superheroes come out of costume? It almost doesn't matter, J- says, the institution is in place. Is the eventual next step of Danzig the evaporation of Danzig himself?

Later in the backstage, a semi-circle gathers around Glenn, women posing with him like Santa and then raiding a box of surplus tour merch. A man in a cutoff Marvel comics shirt keeps exclaiming "I can't believe I'm backstage - I came all the way from Boston" and keeps trying to confirm his thereness with eye contact. I avoid it - I feel very conspicuosly not supposed to be there. A woman in a flowered dress keeps picking up things given to Glenn and putting them in a plastic bag - she works for his label, I find out later. A photographer of gay nightlife talks to my friend and only engages me when I interject in conversation. "I could steal you" he keeps saying, his eyes moving all up and down my friend's body. It's odd because I know they both love it, and I don't mind. It's man on man in here. I don't know where to put my eyes so I keep looking at Glenn, there talking to his uncle and friends among this sea of adoration he's created. He looks so small in his little grey sweater. It's a lot like a family gather, actually, not very spectacular at all.

All that said, Danzig the man is some kind of work by all accounts. The smallness must get to him so he deals by hypercontrol, hyper body, hyper mean. I do not condone violence by any means but wonder why everyone mentioned this video to me when I said I was going to see the show, as if somehow it is evidence for either his celebrity's humanness, need for justice, its inauthenticity or fragility.