Get your kicks on Route 666, or why the devil has all the best tunes: trekking through

the darker side of Heavy Metal music. Introduction With a daytime of sin and a nighttime of hell Everybodys going to look for a bell to ring all through the night. 1 [Heavy Metal ]is [A] loud, simple and repetitive form of hard rock. 2 [A] form of rock music popular during the 1970s and 1980s, basic in form and characterized by shrill guitar solos, repetitive rhythms and high sound levels. 3 The term Heavy Metal is probably one of the most over-used, abused and misused clichs in the English language. It has expanded, unchecked over and around existing musical genres to become so large and multi-faceted, that a simple description or definition is now totally inappropriate. 4

Madness, evil and devil worship; from Black Sabbath to Led Zeppelins legendary (and apparently devil-worshipping) guitarist Jimmy Page, through to Death Metal genre, Deicide, Metallica and Megadeth, the genre has consistently and morbidly dwelt on issues of death, satan, sex and the seamier, more pernicious side of life. The lid on Heavy Metals uncompromising attitude was (in)famously opened with the trial of UK Metal band Judas Priest in the United States, for allegedly inciting the suicides of two young teenage fans. Before, and since, the stigma of unreconstructed wickedness has consistently bedevilled (sic) this mostly non-mainstream, but nonetheless perennially enduring musical form. Accordingly, this text will explore the issues, personalities and peculiarities of Heavy Metal to investigate the claims levelled against it; it will do this by unearthing the origins of this type of musical expression to discover its fascination amongst the young, and why it has endured for the better part of four decades, with suitable concluding remarks.

Origins: or, we sold our souls to Rock n Roll It has widely been assumed, definitely since the advent of primitive fuzzboxes, long-haired, phallocentric young men, and sex- and drug-oriented lyrics that Heavy Metal music is the infernally-inspired work of Beelzebub, designed to ensnare the feckless, weak and unwary. The genre has since done little, if anything, to disabuse the general public of the seeming veracity of this belief; certainly, if lurid stories of substance-fuelled orgies, alcohol excess, and the reduction of hotel rooms to the absolute vision of Tacitus wasteland are to be believed, sensationalised tabloid tales have, if anything, undersold this apocalyptic nightmare that seeks to corrupt the mental and physical health of our young people.

1 2

Lou Reed. All through the night. Chambers English Dictionary, 1990. 3 Brewers Twentieth Century Phrase and Fable Dictionary, 1991. 4 Laker, C. (ed.) Guinness whos who of Heavy Metal. Enfield: Guinness, 1992, p 5.

Indeed, the reverse almost seems to apply. One may reasonably subscribe to the view that this type of musical expression glorifies in its nihilistic reputation; its apparent pre-occupation with sex, death, evil, and general mayhem suggests that the format cares little for acceptable social convention or the cosy chintz curtain and bone china world of civilised society. Ruination, ruination; there is a fifth Horseman abroad, and his name is Heavy Metal! So, having made a brief excursion through what may be mendacious manufactures, presumably to scare the vulnerable and sell copy to Mr and Mrs Outraged somewhere in Middle England and elsewhere, let us now move on to establish the truth warts and all of Heavy Metal music.

It has, according to Metal historians, been widely assumed that the genre has its roots in Fifties Rock n Roll, Sixties pop, a blues-based counter-culture derived from the misery and chains of plantation slavery and, latterly, British working-class vulgarity and antiEstablishment crypto-anarchy. In any event, Rock n Roll was replaced in the 1960s by Rock, of itself a hybridised form of musical expression with a soupon of melancholic longing, and an I woke up this morning, and my dog was dead smattering of world-weary Blues-based defeatism. One of the earliest exponents, if not the absolute original act of the variant, Black Sabbath, have been described as having the sophistication of four CroMagnon hunters whove stumbled on a rock bands equipment, 5 thus firmly entrenching general belief about the musics seeming Neolithic origins. Praise indeed.

Further, according to one acknowledged authority, Heavy Metal as a musical expression was effectively born with the release of Black Sabbaths debut album Black Sabbath on Friday the thirteenth of February, 1970. 6 The term itself is believed to have originated from lyrics in 1960s rock band Steppenwolfs song Born to be wild, (as in I like smokin lightnin, Heavy Metal thunder, racin with the wind, and a feelin that Im under.) a title that, as much as any other, encapsulates the spirit of Metal, although in this instance it probably refers to the motorcycle, rather than the music. Or, conversely, it may have received its name from William Burroughs subversive, drug-oriented novel Naked Lunch, initially published in Paris in 1959. However, and noting a morbid fascination with death, brutish procreative acts, World War Three and the sheer pointlessness of existence, it is nonetheless worth observing that Metals Realist honesty in an era of nuclear-weapon inspired MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) arguably says far more about the human condition that saccharine paens to teenybopper presexual lurve and mindless, gratuitous optimism in the grand manner of, say, The Osmonds, Westlife or the Jackson Five.

Batiste, P. in P. Bashe. Heavy Metal Thunder, p 24. Christie, I. Sound of the Beast: the complete headbanging history of Heavy Metal. London: Alison and Busby, 2004, p 1.
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Be that as it may; the earlier forms of the music provided a noisy backdrop to the death of innocence personified by the demise of JFK and Martin Luther King; of Vietnam, the end of Flower Power, and the apparently cynical proliferation of McDonalds, parking meters and Styrofoam coffee cups. Notably, the continued rise of Metal roughly coincided with the end of the so-called Golden Age of Bretton Woods global management, and the ransoming of the worlds economy during the first Oil Crisis. It should not then, perhaps, come as any surprise that Metal lyrics of the period regaled audiences with tales of paranoia, post-Armageddon desolation, and preternaturally carnal experiences. Further, and to firmly emphasise this culture of gratuitous excess [E]verything [instruments] should be louder than everything else. 7 That is, all the performing bands instruments should be in competition with each other for increasing decibel level (and noting that Deep Purple were once entered into the Guinness book of records as the loudest band in the world).

Curiously, the rise of Reagan, Thatcher, and the post-dtente Second Cold War provided even more in the way of abject dejection; the renewed nuclear sabre rattling between Democracy and the Evil Empire provided yet more impetus for Heavy Metal to immerse itself in self-flagellating despond, echoed by new bands such as Deicide, Napalm Death, Megadeth, Nuclear Assault, and Edge of Sanity who rose to remind us that lifes a bitch, then we die. Moreover, this period also coincided with the so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) characterised by band such as Saxon, Iron Maiden, Motrhead (morphed from Hawkwind), and the reformation period for older bands like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. And If thats not enough, some of the lyrics serve to exacerbate the apparently grossly unfair world that we live in, such as Deep Purples 1984 album Perfect Strangers, and the anti-war song Under the Gun and its lament about stupid bastards and religious freaks who remain safe whilst grieving mothers weep. No surprise, then, that Blackie Lawless, lead singer of the US Metal band WASP, thought that its better to fuck like a beast than presumably die on some foreign battlefield. As should be eminently clear by now, Heavy Metal doesnt take prisoners, not does it care very much for popular opinion. Momma told me not to come 8 Should there be any vestiges of doubt remaining, the nature, and overtly (or allegedly) nasty side of Metal reflects the extra-(or non-) normative aspect of humanity that exists within most (or perhaps all?) of us. A typical concert of the genre consists of long-haired, denim-andleather clad young people with studded gunbelts, tattered jeans, and faces like bags of wrenches. In the world of Metalmania, there is no room for beauty contests only headbanging, dandruff-discharging, mindless shuffling and cries of death! satan! and the obligatory, two-fingered salute representing the horns of the devil. Little wonder, then, that sensible parents would actively discourage their offspring from going to Heavy Metal

7 8

Deep Purple, Lead vocalist, Made in Japan album, Polydor Records, August 1973. A song by the band Three Dog Night.

concerts; they do not want their vulnerable, impressionable children to be seduced by the dark side and suffer eternal damnation should they stare into the abyss for too long. (And noting that the abyss may indeed stare back at them.)

The stage show, in itself, arguably represents the quintessential rock theatre; strutting, hairy frontmen in the manner of, for example, David Lee Roth of Van Halen; Whitesnakes former Deep Purple man David Coverdale; Iron Maidens musician-cum-airline pilot-cum Olympic standard fencer Bruce Dickinson; and the late, lamented, and inimitable Bon Scott of Australian Metal outfit AC/DC, who choked on his own vomit after a particularly heavy drinking bout in London in the mid 1980s. Allied to the obligatory screaming vocals of the aforementioned, the set usually features rampaging, searing licks from strutting, pouting guitarists, groins posing aggressively, with fingers racing up and down the guitar neck at breakneck speed. Backed by a thumping rhythm section and funky keyboard players, a Heavy Metal concert is about drama, adrenalin, perspiration and has been variously described as a loosely termed musical lunatic asylum, or one of the most exciting places on earth, dependent upon ones leanings.

Described by one academic commentator as Metal Epiphany, the concert itself, often dubbed stadium Rock because of the huge numbers of attendees often numbering 200,000plus, in which, when the band eventually emerges from a fog of dry ice or blinding light, [T]he first consummation is pleasure, experiencing an exciting entertainment, the perfection of which is ecstasy. 9 Such is the celebratory morphing of the band and the audience, one may almost believe that the band throws the naked thunder [the music] to the crowd 10 to have it returned in spades. Indeed, the nature of a Heavy Metal concert is such that the audience and the act seem to merge into one organic beast, with the band being the head, and the crowd the body. It is a heaving, chanting, living thing, bonded by sound and touch, and unconstrained by mere convention.

Live Evil The experience of a Heavy Metal concert may well leave the participant aching for more; a lot, however, depends upon the type of band, the sub-variant of the genre, the venue, the numbers, and the weather, notably during a typical English summer. Having attended a Deep Purple gig at Knebworth, Hertfordshire, during the diluvian summer of 1984 one may safely say that evil, mayhem, and general mischief-making was the last thing on my mind, being preoccupied as I was with trying to stay merely wet rather than absolutely soaked through to the skin. That is not to say that others, in perhaps more hospitable climes, are not so disposed. In the US, especially among the more Conservative elements, there seems to be an

10

Weinstein, D. Heavy Metal: the music and its culture. Chicago: Da Capo Press, 2000, p 213. Deep Purple. Hungry days on Perfect Strangers. Purple records, 1984.

obsession 11 with this type of music, doubtless to the delight of the record labels, the artists, the agents, and the distributors. Some ultra-Conservative factions, notably the Ku Klux Klan, blame the black aspects of Metal origins, as evidenced by posters in 1955 proclaiming: Help save the youth of America: Dont buy Negro records. The screaming, idiotic words and savage music of these records are undermining the morals of our white youth in America. They might almost be vilifying Heavy Metal.

The satanic intonations doubtless invoke visions of moral laxity, the degeneracies of The Pit, and the apparently blatant harvesting of souls by Heavy Metal bands with song titles like Pat Benatars Hell is for Children, AC/DCs Hell aint a bad place to be and Highway to hell, Iron Maidens The number of the beast and Black Sabbaths Sabbath, bloody sabbath, to name but a few. This tide of moral outrage is probably best encapsulated by the US organisation Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), a largely US Senatorially-founded movement that was only concerned with the lyrics, not the sound. The PMRC opened the hearings with Sen. Ernest Hollings (R, South Carolina) denouncing the words as [T]his outrageous filth, suggestive violence, suicide, and everything else in the Lords world you would not think of. Other political luminaries of the PMRC were no less forthcoming in traducing Metal lyrics; Susan Baker, wife of former US Secretary of State James Baker, then Treasury Secretary, concurred with other PMRC members by describing the triad of Metal lyrics as being suicide and aggression; sexual perversion; and Satanism. 12

Trials and tribulations: satan and Metal in the dock Following on from the above, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Metal and its practitioners should find themselves facing the righteous wrath of the people, certainly in the devout bible belt that comprises at least part of Middle America. Having forced its way to the front of cultural evolution, this musical form attracted the probably unwelcome attentions of what some may describe as do-gooders who apparently refused to embrace the new realities of a fast-changing cultural modernity. That a clash of civilisations, to paraphrase Samuel Huntington, was inevitable is doubtless understating the case. As Ian Christie comments, By its nature Heavy Metal had always threatened the status quo, offering an escape from the strip malls and fast food of Middle America. 13

A departure from the seemingly empty promises offered by Mammon, and a dissatisfaction with the vacuous, mindless consumerism that marches hand-in-hand with the God of money meant that Metal had, at least lyrically, taken a leaf out of doom and gloom books by Goethe, Nietzche, Alister Crowley and Dennis Wheatley. In looking for answers to the Big Questions that is, God, the devil, heaven and hell, and the nature of existence itself, most kids who took to metal decided that nothing of note was to be gained by listening to the likes of MOR Pop,
11 12

Weinstein, op. cit., p 245. Ibid., p 250.

New Romanticism or slushy balladiers like Harry Connick Jr, Elton John, Engelbert Humperdinck, or Andy Williams. Heavy Metal fans wanted music that reflects the world as it really is, not the way we all know it should be. So, not surprisingly, the uncompromising nature of metal music rampaged its path towards confrontation with The Establishment. Further to the PMRC censorship hearings on Capitol Hill in the 1980s, witch-hunts (sic) continued to disfigure the politico-cultural landscape in the US, fuelled largely by Christian fundamentalism that denounced the works of the devil as a real and omnipresent threat to the youth of America. Such was the moral temper of this crusade, the movement flared into a bright flame of accusation, infamy and indictments.

However, the idea that Heavy Metal corrupted innocent youth was an exercise in mythology. Plain and simple. This truth appeared to be lost on some misguided souls though; notably, the infamous sociopath Richard Ramirez was known as the Night Stalker due to a reporters misprint based, however loosely, on the 1979 AC/DC song, Night Prowler. Ramirezs personality was shaped by poor health, and a psychopathic uncle who trained the young Ramirez boy to kill silently, based on his own bloody experiences in Vietnam as a Green Beret. Later, Long Island drug dealer Ricky Casso killed an errant client in the woods, and was arrested wearing an AC/DC T-shirt. The Police, reluctant to label the case as satanic, although the fellow-travellers of the PMRC seized the opportunity to point accusatory fingers at Heavy Metal, and noting that some of them has dipped their minds into the well of fantasy and decided that AC/DC stands for AntiChrist/Devils Child, rather than the two types of electrical current that the Australian band had originally intended. It should also be noted that during this time over 20 million AC/DC albums were sold, so the actions of two dysfunctional murderers cannot really termed as statistically significant.
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Subsequently, it transpires, the notion of attacking Heavy Metal for its lyrical content was a clear case of shooting the messenger; one cannot merely dismiss non-conformity with the dysfunctionalism of the few, a notable observation when The Beatles were dragged into the Manson trial imbroglio on the specious argument that the lyrics of Helter Skelter were Mansons murderous inspiration, all by virtue of wilful ignorance of the songs content. So, as Heavy Metal became a powerful catalyst for the faithful, it is not therefore inconceivable that a basic lack of understanding of Heavy Metal could be useful for cynical gain.

The seeming fruitlessness of this crusade against Metal is probably best exemplified by the Judas Priest trial, when two fans interpreted the lyrics on the Stained Class album as a call to commit suicide. By 1988, Kenneth McKenna a personal injury (or, pejoratively, an ambulance chasing) attorney, had already, unsuccessfully, tried to ensure that Ozzy Osbourne of Black Sabbath was made liable for criminal charges on the grounds that his

13 14

Christie, Op.Cit., p 291. Christie, Ibid., p 292.

song Suicide Solution was an incitement to influence impressionable fans in the selfdestructive trap. As Osbournes defence lawyer successfully pointed out, the song was about excessive alcohol consumption as a form of slow suicide, and lamented the death of Osbournes friend Bon Scott from overindulgence, and that the lyrics were in any case clearly printed on the album cover.

Assuming that there is no such thing as negative publicity, McKenna resurfaced in 1991 with a lawsuit against the British rockers Judas Priest surely an indictable band name if ever there was one in Reno, Nevada, which was then a less favourable arena for free speech than the Osbourne fiasco in California. The Reno hearing was a wrongful death charge, in this instance a dual suicide. Seemingly, after drinking and listening to Stained Class, the two boys went outside with a plan and a loaded shotgun. In the ensuing hours, one died of self-inflicted wounds and the other expired later.

In the Nevada courthouse, Judas Priest listened to a tirade of rhetoric from McKenna and his legal team talking about subliminal messages or backward orders in the record, inciting the listener to suicidal actions. McKenna ignored the lyrical content, which in any case was protected by the Constitution. Despite accusations of mind control and supernatural influences, reason and the band prevailed in an often intimidating and inquisitorial atmosphere.

In any event, a series of negative and high-profile engagements with the law served to provide the music with an unwanted (and unwarranted) mystique that detracted from all the positive benefits that Heavy Metal enshrines. As previously stated, this format is, nor was it ever, about slushy over-worked teenylove that had (and continues to be) the exhausted anthems of a thousand pre-packaged, manufactured music outfits who cant play instruments competently, but rely heavily on the techno-wizardry of the mixing desk and recording studio to mask a lack of real, and enduring, talent. So; if Metal isnt about love, or inciting the weak and disaffected to perpetrate unspeakable acts in the name of lord satan, what is it saying?

Ban-Demonium, conscience, and other things The US band Megadeth, the offshoot of an early 1980s spat between leader Dave Mustaine and the rest of an earlier Metallica line up, wrote a song called Holy Wars about the immorality of the 1991 Gulf War. This song was not couched in terms likely to endear it to the anti-Saddam Coalitions political masters. So, the BBC promptly banned it, presumably for neglecting to stay on message. Black Sabbath, the apparent bte noire of the Establishment, have included a number of anti-war, non-romantic offerings to occupy the interested listener. Songs like War Pigs, Paranoid, Fairies Wear Boots (about hallucinogenic drugs) and Snowblind (about the iniquities of Cocaine use) testify to the fact that the band has, indeed, some kind of social conscience. Ian Kilminster (Lemmy) of Motrhead fame, whilst portraying

the image of half-mad, 75% deaf and totally demented metalhead had often produced screaming lyrics about living fast, dying young, fornicating and drinking to total insensibility and yet can articulately express his feelings about the amoral machinations of scheming politicians and rapacious business types. Although, to be frank (!) Lemmy rather shed the Heavy Metal outlaw persona by advertising for the French AXA insurance company on UK TV. Now, if that aint respectability, what is As matters currently stand, it is axiomatic that musicians tend to be left-leaning (politically) Ted Nugent notwithstanding, and have expressed anti-war, anti-oppression and pro-freedom in the universal idiom, rather than the narrow and bowdlerised version emanating from the primed mouths of certain politicians.

The remaining problem, and the one that attracts the most negative publicity, amounts to the emergence of extreme offshoots splinter groups of the Metal genre. The arrival of Death, Doom and Black Metal suggests, prima facie, that more traditional, mainstream variants have exhausted themselves creatively, which necessitated the music flying off on an evolutionary tangent to produce a new 1990s-style offspring, notably Death Metal and its immediate predecessor Black Metal. So, the final if that is the word- traces of traditional, rock n roll based Metal were obliterated by the new masters of the Metal universe: Death, Morbid Angel, and Deicide. Born roughly around the time of Black Sabbaths debut, these musicians have spent their entire lives in the era of Metal. Based on a merciless sonic signature 15 Death Metal became a scream of rage, searing speed riffs, and the caustic wail of banshees. As for origins, it may be said that DM is the first globalised Metal; Heavy Metal was born in England; Thrash in San Francisco; but Death is a creature of the world. So, in keeping with the main theme of this paper, Death Metal was (and doubtless still is) about the mythic interpretation of satan, with the music being an anarchic, frenzied amalgam of unshackled lust and total abandon, echoing Alister Crowleys proclamation of do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. From this angle, there may, indeed, be some justification for stigmatising Metal as a covert (or overt) conduit for spreading the message of evil. Whether it is mere posturing, publicity-seeking cynicism to the fore is quite another matter.

Conclusion

So, in the final analysis, perhaps Metal really is a much-misunderstood beast; as Weinstein would have it: To single out metal as an expression of satanism is absurd on the face of it. Symbols of satan are found in non religious cultural forms and artefacts throughout the West, from plays and short stories to Mardi Gras and Halloween celebrations Heavy Metals embrace of deviltry is not a religious statement. It is a criticism of the phoney heaven of respectable society where no-one boogies and everyone goes to ice cream socials. 16

15 16

Christie, op. cit., p. 238. Weinstein, op. cit., p. 260.