Danny & the Nightmares originated when Daniel Johnston sought an outlet for garage-flavored, horror-movie-inflected rock & roll performed alongside other musicians, yet the project soon developed an independent momentum. In the late 1990s, after a performance in Waller, Texas, the musician was contacted by Jason, an admirer who played guitar and keyboards and expressed interest in working together. Adding Jason’s spouse Bridget on drums, the three-piece began channeling the more amplified dimension of Johnston’s style. The first Danny & the Nightmares album appeared in 1999 on Johnston’s Eternal Yip Eye Music label. While occupied with visual art and his own Daniel Johnston releases, including the Mark Linkous collaboration Fear Yourself, Johnston resumed activity with the group for the 2002 EP The End Is Near Again, issued that same year by the zine and label Cool Beans!. Freak Brain, the band’s second long-player, followed in 2005 on Sympathy for the Record Industry; consistent with prior recordings, it featured unvarnished, four-track immediacy together with material centered on monsters, the Devil, and girls. More than five years elapsed before the next Danny & the Nightmares album was finished, owing to Johnston’s involvement in separate endeavors, yet Death of Satan emerged in summer 2013 via Munster Records.
