From that point forward, Steele has devoted himself and his band to the DIY approach that had served the Misfits so well in the early years of its existence, relying on a model that connects the band directly with its fans without a bunch of marketing middlemen getting in the way.
When The Undead released Act Your Rage in 1989, this approach paid off big time.
The album had been rejected by countless independent labels, so Steele took on all the work to release and promote the album on a budget of $6,000. His efforts secured enough pre-orders to warrant an initial pressing of 5,000 colored vinyl LPs and 2,000 cassettes, which sold out immediately on the May 8, 1989 release date. By September of that year, the album had moved 10,000 units.
Meanwhile, the band reached the No. 1 spot at over 100 college stations and the No. 3 spot at the commercial radio station KFMH in Iowa.
Not too shabby for the efforts of single-person promotion, but cutting out the middlemen doesn't necessarily mean more money, at least not at first.
"I've never really made any real money on Act Your Rage between all the huge sales we had," Steele says. "It was always just enough to cover the phone bills and postage and all that kind of a thing. But it was an accomplishment. I mean, it gave me some bragging rights."
These days, as the interest in early hardcore has been growing, Steele has a bit more to brag about.
"You've got control of all your material," Steele says. "A lot of the bands that I was associated with back in the early New York hardcore scene, they got bigger record deals than me at the time. They were getting a lot of money upfront, but as time went on and CDs came in, suddenly, there was a renewed interest in early New York hardcore bands. I was able to keep reissuing my own material where they didn't own their rights anymore and they couldn't obtain those rights from their former record labels. And so it hurt them in that way."
As record collectors spend thousands on original releases that will never be reissued, Steele can reissue anything from The Undead's back catalog whenever he wants.
For the re-release of Act Your Rage, though, Steele wanted to do something special. In 2018, The Undead’s drummer, Joe Stoker, suggested that a special 30th-anniversary edition should be created for fans. The band decided to record new versions of the songs and have guest musicians from around the punk rock world add to them.
This process took much more time than the band had expected. Global events like the COVID-19 pandemic certainly got in the way, but so too did personal issues. For one, keyboard player and guitarist Diana Steele was diagnosed with liver cancer in early 2019.
"She's doing great as far as the cancer goes," Steele says. "For a couple of years, the doctor kept saying, 'There's no cure, but you're in remission.' And it got to the point where the doctor finally said, 'You know what? You're cured.' Anybody else either got a transplant or is on chemotherapy."
Though battling cancer, Diana did much of the legwork to get people to agree to appear on the album, disregarding the proper channels and just straight-out asking.
"We do a lot of horror conventions and things like that," Steele says, "and we'd be in a room and you'd have all these guys from bands all in there. I would point out to somebody say, 'Oh, man, that's a so-and-so from this,' and she would just go over and start talking to them. They tended to know something about me, and they'd be like, 'Well, yeah, sure, we'll do something on there.'"
Many artists were approached who did not make it to the album. Marky Ramone said he couldn't. CJ Ramone said he would do it twice, but Steele regrettably lost his contact information both times. One of the Misfits' original drummers, Jim "Mr. Jim" Catania, was also supposed to be on the album.
"Mr. Jim really wanted to do something on the album," Steele says, "but when he was up in the area, we didn't have our studio ready, so we couldn't have him come in and record. And when he was back home in Florida, we couldn't line up a studio in time for him to go in and lay something down. So that was one of the big disappointments."
Among other disappointments, New York Dolls co-founder Rick Rivets intended to have a greater role on the album, but he died in 2019 after contributing rhythm guitar to "Eve of Destruction."
Despite all of the setbacks, Act Your Rage...Again is set to be released on May 8, 2025, exactly 36 years after the original album's release.
The album hits harder and sounds cleaner than the original release, delivering on the promise to showcase a who's-who in punk rock royalty.
Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal, who filled in for Slash in Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy days, lights up the album opener "Evening of Desire."
"I think I wrote that around '83, somewhere around there," Steele says, "but I heard back when the big thing was Eddie Van Halen's solo on 'Beat it.' And I was just like, I wish I could do something like that. So I tried, and that's on the original version, and then I played back what [Bumblefoot] did, and I was like, oh my God, he did exactly what I tried to do, but could never come close to. It was like he literally got inside my head on that thing."
Saxophone player Tim Cappello, of The Lost Boys fame, was also asked to expand upon Steele's original vision of the album.
Metal Melting Pot
"When I had originally written, 'Put Your Clothes Back On,' I had intended it to have a horn section, but since I couldn't get one, I just did all the supposed horn parts on guitar," Steele says. "So now, having the opportunity to actually have somebody who could really play come in here and do it, that was a done deal."The album also sees Black Flag's Dez Cadena contributing lead guitars to "Undead," "Ratt Fink" and "In Eighty-Four;" Buzzcocks' Steve Garvey playing bass on "Eve of Destruction" and "In Eighty-Four;" Megadeth's Derk Verbeuren on "Social Reason;" Cancerslug's Alex Story singing on "Hollywood Boulevard," "Undead" and "I Don't Wanna Go;" and so many more.
"The whole plan for this album from the get-go was, we recorded all the basic tracks, and then as somebody came in, especially on guitar, they would replace me," Steele says. "My original goal was to have as little of me on this album as possible ... to try to step away from everything and really try to just get all these other people to do as much as possible."
With the release date locked in, Steele says he intends to promote the album with short weekend runs to cities around the country, though no dates have been scheduled as of yet. Steele has been confirmed to appear on Dallas radio station KNON's The Catacombs with DJ Crash at midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning.
In the meantime, Steele is happy to sit back and enjoy time with his family, especially helping to cultivate his 4-year-old granddaughter's musical taste.
"She freaks us out sometimes because she's really got this incredible memory and ability to just absorb everything," Steele says. "I mean, she sees a Disney movie and the next day she's singing the songs. When it comes to music, she's just like, she's right there all the time. She melts me every time she's here, so she always comes up with something and she's, she's got her attitude. I've got a shirt that I wear that says, 'You can't tell me what to do. You're not my granddaughter.' When she's here, she calls the shots and it's great."
