Sistema de Frenos
4. Mantenimiento y servicio 3
The most visible and confrontational contemporary adoption of Satan— and most frequent intersection with modern Satanism—is undoubtedly the world of popular music. Hard rock and heavy metal music have since their in- ception been repeatedly accused of being satanic /Satanic (traditional or mod- ern conceptions), for reasons that are hardly obscure. Rock and roll in general, and heavy metal in particular, is driven by the need to adopt an antagonistic pose. Both are by definition antiauthoritarian, championing decadence, disso- lution, and the transgression of conventional values. When looking for an an- tisocial standard nothing can be more provocative than the adoption of your society’s leading personification of evil. Adopting a Satanic pose is a particu- larly effective means of validating one’s rebellion, as Lord Byron, the hedonis- tic template for the modern rock star, realized more than two centuries ago. Rock music has seen a parade of rock stars follow the wayward poet in adopt- ing the androgynous, effete sensuosity of the Romantic Luciferian figure, as exemplified by Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, and Robert Plant, and so forth.
Heavy metal singers have gravitated toward the harsher, more demonic side of the devil, as can been seen in the exaggerated personae of Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, Glenn Danzig, and Marilyn Manson. All have tapped into the immense power of Satan /Lucifer to embody primal instincts and taboo- smashing. Pure escapism is another factor, as is a desire to shock the church congregation or, more to the point, mom and dad. What is difficult, however, is establishing when heavy metal Satanism is real and when it is show.
Satan entered mainstream rock music in the era of The Devil Rides Out,
Rosemary’s Baby, and the establishment of the Church of Satan. The Rolling
Stones engaged in a late-1960s flirtation with Satanic imagery and themes, be- ginning with the psychedelic Sgt. Pepper–inspired misfire Their Satanic Majes-
ties Request in 1967, which saw Mick Jagger appear on the cover in a sorcerer’s
hat. Their 1969 single “Sympathy for the Devil” confirmed for many that the band was of the devil born, an impression reinforced by their licentious lifestyles. Jagger and most of the band also had central roles in Anger’s short film Invocation of my Demon Brother, which included a cameo from LaVey. The violence and deaths that marred the Altamont Speedway Free Festival of the same year—delegating security duties to the Hell’s Angels in exchange (reportedly) for free beer proved an injudicious decision—quickly ended The Stones’ run with the devil, and they quickly abandoned the theme. After being immortalized in the documentary Gimme Shelter, The Rolling Stones’ appear- ance at Altamont became, along with the Tate / LaBianca murders, a powerful symbol of the collapse of counterculture values and the end of the 60s.
The same era saw the emergence of a more menacing form of rock, heavy metal, and the beginning of a trend toward darker subject matter and im- agery. Black Sabbath were in the vanguard, detuning their instruments and employing the devil’s tone (the tritone) to perform doom-laden epics. In the 1970s the three primary metal bands—Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin—were seen as the embodiment of evil, an unholy trinity of noise and distortion. There was little substance to the rumors, apart from a few devil- related songs from Black Sabbath and Jimmy Page’s friendship with Anger and significant interest in Crowley (Page is a major collector of Crowley memora- bilia and at one point owned Crowley’s Boleskine House in Scotland). It has long been tempting, for some commentators, to see the connections between these figures as evidence of an underlying conspiracy, despite mostly sketchy evidence. While it is true that members of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones had various connections with Kenneth Anger, the Church of Satan, the Process Church (Marianne Faithful, Jagger’s then girlfriend and costar in
Invocation, was a member), and therefore the Manson Family, these facts do
not indicate an organized proliferation of evil.
With rock music the established mode of defiance, there was no short- age of bands ready to play devil’s advocate. Alice Cooper was a poster boy for
diabolism throughout the 1970s, although he regarded his shock-rock antics as entirely benign—even mocking his own predicament on Goes to Hell (1976). He nonetheless established the use of the aesthetics of evil in rock, and numerous bands followed his lead in adopting similar trappings. Kiss were a vaudeville act from the beginning, and while Van Halen’s “Runnin’ with the Devil” may sound dangerous at first, it was a largely meaningless celebration of freedom and hedonism. Equally superficial would have to be the dance with the devil of Los Angeles umlaut enthusiasts Mötley Crüe. The band is a prime example of heavy metal’s exploitation-for-infamy approach to satanism. Desperate to shock, their 1983 album Shout at the Devil saw the quartet adorned in penta- grams surrounded by hellfire. Yet by their 1985 follow-up Theatre of Pain, the diabolism had been largely dispensed with in favor of an ultra-glam aesthetic based primarily on pink feather boas and eyeliner. Across the Atlantic, British metal stalwarts Iron Maiden were accused of being satanists after the title track of their 1982 album Number of the Beast described a band member’s nightmare in frenzied detail. More than willing to put their collective tongue in cheek, the band included a nonsensical backwards message about a three-headed monster in the track “Still Life” on their following release Piece of Mind (1983).
Backwards messages, called “backmasking,” did not remain benign for long. The strong association of heavy metal with satanism eventually drew more determined opposition. Heavy metal was in the center of the storm during the SRA scare, with a number of prominent bands accused of utilizing back- masking and subliminal messages to influence their listeners. Two Arizona teenagers attempted suicide with a shotgun in 1985 after drinking, smoking marijuana, and listening to the Judas Priest album Stained Glass. One was suc- cessful, the other lost half his face and later successfully committed suicide with painkillers. Judas Priest were sued for causing the original suicide with a backwards message supposedly saying “I took my life!” on the track “Beyond The Realms of Death.” The band was acquitted after they identified a num- ber of ludicrous backwards messages in their songs. Judas Priest members later observed that if they were to put subliminal messages in their music, telling their fans to kill themselves wouldn’t make much sense—“buy more albums” was a far more bankable suggestion.
Ex–Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne was similarly sued over his provocatively titled track “Suicide Solution.” The song, which dealt with the alcohol-related death of original AC / DC singer Bon Scott, was connected to the 1984 suicide of a teenager suffering from depression. Osbourne was accused of using an advanced mind-control technique dubbed “hemi-synch” on the track along with the subliminal lyrics “Get the gun and try it! Shoot, Shoot, Shoot!” Cleared of the charges, the perpetually baffled Osbourne later commented, “Does this guy [the opposing attorney] think I’m a fucking sci- entist or a rock star? The only sink I’ve ever heard of is the one you wash your
fucking face in every morning.”3 As the self-proclaimed “Prince of Darkness,”
Osbourne is a leading example of how far from reality a cloven-hooved public persona can be, as his hapless turn as a reality TV dad clearly establishes.4
Despite—or more likely because of—the rising controversy, heavy metal continued to get uglier and more provocative. As the old guard were fighting off lawsuits, a new breed of faster, more aggressive bands were championing satanism in a far more direct fashion. British black metal pioneers Venom made no attempt to hide their backmasking, inserting reversed Paradise Lost excerpts along with threats to “burn your soul” and “crush your bones” at the start of “In League with Satan.”5 With Venom, however, the subliminal
satanic messages were largely irrelevant, as they were generally less disturb- ing that the lyrics recorded in the correct direction, as testified by the tracks “Sons of Satan,” “Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil),” and others. As the most genuinely frightening band of the era, they were widely regarded as genuine devil-worshippers, even by many heavy metal fans. Practicing ( LaVeyan) Satanists, the band adopted and immortalized the Baphomet and inverted pentagram of the Church of Satan. They placed the combined im- ages on the cover of their 1981 debut Welcome to Hell, helping to popularize the myth that both were legitimate and traditional satanic symbols. Venom was joined in the move toward greater extremes by Sweden’s Bathory and Denmark’s Mercyful Fate, influential underground bands that both had a heavy focus on the devil. King Diamond, lead singer of Mercyful Fate, was friends with LaVey and a long-term member of the Church of Satan, further cementing the ties between the music and the creed.
In the wake of Venom’s base sexual obsessions and at times laughably camp satanism a legion of bands followed. One of the first and most promi- nent were American thrash metal pioneers Slayer, who quickly established themselves as Hell’s de facto house band. With their greater technical ability and blistering song tempos providing a more terrifying vehicle for the devil’s music than early black metal’s primitive and often crude performances, Slayer became one of the world’s top-selling extreme metal acts, and a perennial lightning rod for critical excoriation. For many opponents of heavy metal, Slayer were irrefutable proof that the entire genre was hell-bound. The band’s extraordinarily bad reputation—built on the sulfurous albums Hell
Awaits, Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, and God Hates Us All—was eventually
revealed to be grossly overstated, and it has slowly become apparent that half of the band are practicing Christians. Nonetheless, in the realm of extreme and satanic metal, their influence is enormous.
Propelled as it is by a rejection of the mainstream, heavy metal has con- sistently been confronted with the paradox of eventually becoming main- stream itself, and has each time responded by becoming more extreme. The late 1980s and early 1990s rise of death metal and the second wave of black
metal saw heavy metal became home to countless artists claiming to be genu- ine devil-worshippers, on their albums and in the music magazines at least. With the commercial success of bands like Slayer and death metal act Morbid Angel, both of who could sell half a million copies of an album, the num- ber of bands adopting a satanic stance exploded. By the end of the millen- nium there were numerous prominent bands professing a satanic allegiance of some form. Discerning between those that merely adopt this stance for provocative purposes and those that are more dedicated to the topic is dif- ficult, if not impossible, for the outsider. Even the fans find it difficult. There has been so much satanic metal produced that it is now seen as largely passé by many long-term followers of the genre. Many contemporary metal bands have moved away from the topic, as it has simply been exhausted. As the 1970s’ high priest of shock, Alice Cooper (now a born-again Christian), com- mented in relation to black metal: “The satanism that you see is not satanism, it’s some kind of caricature satanism . . . if you’re looking for satanism in the first place you don’t look to rock and roll, a bunch of kids playing loud guitars [and making the sign of the devil], that’s Halloween.”6
At the same time, many bands go beyond simply adopting the imagery of satanism and endorse values that invariably owe a great deal to LaVey’s influ- ence. The intersection of heavy metal and satanic imagery is extremely power- ful, and undoubtedly the most visible Satanic influence in popular culture. Heavy metal’s natural tendency toward greater extremes invites the adoption of extremist thought. Misanthropy, nihilism, violence, and other antisocial themes are standard. Included here are The Electric Hellfire Club, Morbid Angel, Danzig, Deicide, Satyricon, and countless black metal and death metal acts. The doctrines and rhetoric of modern Satanism provide a convenient quasi-intellectual crutch to antisocial rebellion and a ready-made vocabulary/ mythology of opposition. Yet degrees of allegiance vary from band to band. Whereas Slayer’s lengthy satanic excursion was nothing more than a theatri- cal exercise in provocation that they abandoned in the early 1990s for near pathological anti-Christian vitriol (the primary songwriter is not Christian), Morbid Angel was—and remains—deeply interested in the ideology of mod- ern Satanism, particularly in the lyrics of vocalist David Vincent.