When Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood was released in 1983 it became a new formula for hardcore but it also left some fiends bewildered with its aesthetic.  Glenn maintains that the sonic speed of the songs was Jerry, Doyle and Robo's fault, feeling that they didn't have the musicianship to perform the songs any other way but at warp speed.  Glenn actually slept during the recording session (October 3rd, 1982) as they had performed a gig earlier that night and the recording time was from midnight to dawn the next morning.  Seven songs were recorded during the session; 4 as instrumentals and 3 with Glenn's vocals.  Glenn's remaining vocals weren't added until June 1983 and additionally four more songs were recorded in July of 1983.

Original plans were for Earth A.D. to be an EP which was going to be recorded while the band was in California during The Walk Among Us Tour in April 1982 but they never got around to it due to Arthur Googy quitting the band.  By the time the band got around to recording the E.P. Glenn had written several more songs and used two intended "Samhain" songs in order to make the release an LP.

Jerry maintains that it was Glenn's intent to hop on the "hardcore bandwagon" with the new Misfits album.

The songs on Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood were really nothing new for The Misfits as they had been performing most of them live since early 1982 with the exception of Bloodfeast and Death Comes Ripping which were the two songs Glenn had actually written for "Samhain".  There is a Misfits rehearsal tape from September 1981, The Pit, where three future Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood songs as well as a few of the Misfits earlier songs are heard.  Listening to that recording and the sound on Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood it seems to point to the band wanting to capture more of a live feel during the Earth A.D. session; this was also the standard recording style of Glen "Spot" Lockett, in-house producer/engineer for SST.

As early as March 1983 Glenn had mentioned in an interview for Flesh and Bones that he was interested in doing another side project, adding that, "The new record will actually have a band on it...." and as early as June 1983 Glenn had already confided to Henry Rollins that he was leaving The Misfits; "Yeah.  Remember the Santa Monica Civic show?  I quit that night.  That was June 1983.  I told those guys, "That's it."  As a matter of fact, I told Henry Rollins that night too.  He said, "Wow, I've seen it coming though."~Glenn Danzig, Forced Exposure, Fall 1984.  It is interesting to note the direction that Glenn went with Samhain, it was definitely as far from hardcore as he could get and actually built off two previous songs, The Misfits Halloween II and the unreleased Archangel; there is also Mephisto Waltz which The Misfits rehearsed [Jerry claims to have never heard the song prior to its inclusion on Collection II.] but never performed live or recorded.

Forced Exposure, Fall 1984
Byron: When you were writing stuff for Earth A.D., around that period, was it real specific -- this song is for Earth A.D. and one is for this unnamed project which was to become Samhain?

Glenn: No, because most of the Earth A.D. stuff goes back to 1981.  We were doing all that stuff back then.  We were doing "Queen Wasp."  I had "Earth A.D." written, but Googy couldn't play it.  We were doing
"Demonomania" -- all that stuff was '81/early '82, with the exception of "Bloodfeast" and "Death Comes Ripping" and "Green Hell" -- which was written for the Misfits.  "We Bite" is real old, "Die Die My Darling" we recorded at the Walk Among Us sessions.  It always took the Misfits a real long time to get records out because Jerry and Doyle were working and they weren't really committed to the band as much as they should have been and things like that.

Here is a list of the songs from Earth A.D. (including the added Die, Die My Darling E.P. songs) and the first known dates of them being played live~

Earth A.D.-10/01/1982: BOB'S PLACE, Robo on drums
We Bite-02/28/1982: 9:30 CLUB, Googy on drums
Demonomania-02/28/1982: 9:30 CLUB, Googy on drums
Wolfs Blood-09/25/1982: CITY CLUB, Robo on drums
Queen Wasp-The Pit rehearsals 09/81; -02/28/1982: 9:30 CLUB, Googy on drums
Devilock-09/25/1982: CITY CLUB, Robo on drums
Mommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight?-The Pit rehearsals 09/81; -02/28/1982:  -10/31/1981: NATIONAL UKRAINIAN HOME, Googy on drums
Death Comes Ripping (Samhain song)-10/29/1983: GRAYSTONE HALL, Todd Swalla on drums
Green Hell-03/20/1983: CHANNEL CLUB, Robo on drums
Bloodfeast (Samhain song)
Hellhound-01/07/1983: HENRY FORD COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Robo on drums
Die Die My Darling-The Pit rehearsals 09/81; -02/28/1982: 9:30 CLUB, Googy on drums

Below are excerpts from various interviews specifically mentioning Earth A.D.
 

FORCED EXPOSURE #7/8, p.28-30+, Fall 1984

Byron: I was real happy that the speed [of Initium compared to Earth A.D.~zh] was back down...

Jimmy: Yeah, a lot of that stuff on Earth A.D. was just too much...

Glenn: It was just too fast.  That's why I was really depressed after that album.  I just didn't want anything to do with that band.  Some of the stuff on Initium is even too fast for us, so we might re-record some of it and slow it down.

Jimmy: Were those songs written at that speed?

Glenn: No, they had this idea that they wanted to play live in the studio, and that's why they wanted Spot to produce, and the songs came out way too fast.  I was just not too thrilled with it.  It's my least favorite Misfits record.  It's alright.  I still think it blows away a lot of the other stuff on the market, but for me personally...

UGLY THINGS #12, Summer 1993  Jerry Only

"The problem here was that it [Walk Among Us] was a stepping stone, and no one internally wanted to accept that as what we were and what we would be.  In other words, it wasn't a time to draw a tangent, it was time to go forward.  And that was the demise of the band after that point. Glenn wanted to get heavily into this thrash stuff, and me, I wanted more songs like "Astro Zombies" and "Hatebreeders."  

FEH #12, p.24-27, Sept/Oct '94 Jerry Only

JO: It was great.  That's my favorite album [Walk Among Us].  I thought on Earth A.D. there was a lot of good thoughts, but we sacrificed something to do that.  Not musically, but emotionally.  I thought we had something with WAU that set us apart from everyone else.  It built a wall around us like the wall around King Kong.  We were touring with all these thrash bands like The Necros and the kids would go off.  We played this placed called The Freezer in Detroit and it was about 30' wide and 90' long.  Because it was so narrow, to have a P.A., you'd have to pile it straight up.  There'd be a line from the middle of the club, right past me onstage, over the drum platform, on top of Doyle's amps, then onto the P.A. where these kids would jump off a 25' stack of amps.  It was cool.  I think Glenn was taken by that, so he wanted to go with the new thing.  We had "Queen Wasp" before Earth A.D. came out.  Goggy was actually one of the creators of the trash beat with that and the one on "Mommy [Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight?]".  But why sacrifice what we had developed to try and incorporate something that in time would flow into itself?  Why stuff it in when we'll evolve into it?  I wanted to stick with the '50s type horror songs and throw a thrash song or two in every dozen or so.  We jumped the gun goin' from one to the other.  We were trying to adapt to something instead of making it adapt to us.  "Demonomania" I still don't like 'til this day.  It's a stupid song, it
makes no sense.  "Queen Wasp" is good.  "Death Comes Ripping" is the best song on that album.  "Devilock" is all right...

FEH: "Devilock" is cool.

JO: The music is great.  There's good stuff on there.  If we'd had waited
five more months, you'd have seen a hybrid between WAU and Earth A.D., which would've been better.  We recorded Earth A.D. right after we did a show.  We did the show and went right into this studio, no padding in the walls, just bare cement block.  We put Robo in the middle, turned my amps facing out, turned Doyle's amps facing out, and played standing in the middle, facing Robo's kit.  Glenn fell asleep.  We cut that in one night.  We were done at 7:00 in the morning, five hours, and it sounds like it.  We'd do feedback tracks.  We'd go into the console room, throw our guitars on the floor, turn the mics up, and let it go for a whole song while we had a cup of coffee (laughs).

MAXIMUM ROCK N ROLL #151 part 1, December 1995 Jerry Only

MRR.  How did you feel about the band's thrash phase prior to the break-up.
JO: The Misfits should not be following cracks in the road, it's not like water running downhill.  Just because at the time somebody's going to the left, just because at the time it seems like the right move, if that's not where we're going then who cares.  We go where we go.  We're out there
breaking new ground, breaking new frontiers, that was the main wedge of our band.  We were able to bust through solid walls just because of the way we would hit 'em, and do our own thing.  I'm not saying the Misfits shouldn't have been thrash oriented in the future.  I'm just saying the later releases of that nature should have been much more thought out, and much more involved with the progression of the "Walk Among Us" stuff, which to me was IT!  We had arrived once we did "Three Hits From Hell", that's the best 45 on the planet!  It has the right look, the right sound, the right feel.  It is your black and white B-movie from the '50S with an '80s type beat.

SECONDS #44, OCTOBER 1997

SECONDS: Samhain wasn't horror; it went farther
DANZIG: It was a more real approach. That's what Earth A.D. was supposed to be; the other guys made it cartoon-y.

SECONDS #44, OCTOBER 1997

SECONDS: What do you think of Earth A.D. in retrospect
ONLY: If Glenn will give me the two-inch tape, I'11 let you hear what it really sounds like. Glenn slept through it. We had done a gig at the Santa Monica Civic Center with Black Flag and after the show, they took us to this studio. We just got done doing a gig and we recorded from midnight to nine the following morning.  We recorded it in one big room. My amps faced one way, Doyle's faced the other way and Robe sat between the two stacks of amps.  We recorded it while Glenn slept. The only time Glenn got up was when we did "Mommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight?" [Glenn actually recorded his vocals on 3 of that tracks that night, along with the "Mommy" break~zh] You can hear him lay it down so we could start the song and then he went back to bed. We had twenty-four tracks and we did tracks where we would just let our guitars feed back. That's why you hear all that squealing at the beginning of Earth A.D. Glenn doesn't even know what's on that tape because he wasn't awake when we did it.  I know the way he mixes, he always tries to save money and do it in these rinky-dinky places. I'm sure he didn't sit down and listen to each track on the twenty-four track that's what needed to be done. I gave what he did a "D." It could have been an "A-plus." The whole concept behind Earth A.D. was Motorhead meets The Misfits.

SECONDS: The common complaint was that The Misfits became a Hardcore band on Earth A.D. and lost their original vibe.
ONLY: That's why I broke the band up [Glenn in fact "broke up the band"~zh]. It came to the point where Glenn was trying to form the band into a commodity that lent itself to what was hip at the time. I didn't see any sense in "Demonomania." "We Bite" -- I liked the song but not the title.  It's a queer joke or something. I think Glenn was tapped. He was taking a band that was doing songs like "Halloween" and "Vampira" and making them do songs of lesser quality. He was a real hard-ass about it, too. Earth A.D. should have been Walk Among Us and the cream of the crop of Thrash. That would have been the right move but he didn't want to hear that. People consider it the Thrash Metal bible and to a certain extent it is, but it broke up the band. He wanted to be everybody else.

Eyehategod singer Mike "IX" Williams wrote a piece about seeing The Misfits at The Island in Houston, TX (October 16th, 1982) and at Tupelo's in New Orleans, LA the following night as well as being arrested along with The Misfits/Necros in the "graverobbing" incident in New Orleans and according to him, "It was clearly almost the end of an era for them [The Misfits] though as they were all traveling separately, with the two brothers flying to gigs, while Robo and Glen rode in the equipment truck. Glen had even voiced his displeasure to us about the new, faster material."

http://www.cvltnation.com/grave-robbers-from-outer-space-by-mike-ix-williams/

"I always have [wanted to explore bigger ideas lyrically~ZH]. In The Misfits, it started getting too crazy with Earth A.D. The concepts stared becoming too brutal and violent. It was less about fiction and more about the real world, the past, present, and future. I think a lot of people got freaked out by that."~Glenn Danzig, music.avclub.com, 2007

"Actually, in The Misfits I just didn't take the credit [for performing guitar in studio~ZH]. Most of the time it's my guitar tracks. And even my drum tracks for a little while. The only record I didn't play guitar much on was Earth A.D. Everything else, yeah."~Glenn Danzig, laweekly.com, 2014

"Earth A.D. is still an anomaly to everybody. They have no fucking clue what it’s about. The thing is, Earth A.D. destroyed our band: [after that] there was no place to go. We had taken it to the limit. We tapped out. That was it. What Earth A.D. did was launch the hardcore scene, the death metal scene, the thrash scene. All those other bands, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica, all those bands that came after us used that as their guiding light. I know that happened, but that’s fine."~Jerry Only, 100percentrock, 2015

It's seems the "stepping stone/hybrid" that Jerry mentions between Walk Among Us and Earth A.D. had already been released with Evilive.  If anyone doubted the direction of The Misfits then one only need to listen to the live release, it makes a great transition between the two LP's styles.