The Devil's Music

I've got that Evil Feeling, whooa-oa-ooo.



There is, of course, incontrovertible evidence that Rock music, and especially Heavy Metal, is the Devil's music. There's no use denying it since many of its practitioners come right out and admit it:

"Rock has always been THE DEVIL'S MUSIC . . . I believe rock and roll is dangerous . . . I feel we're only heralding SOMETHING EVEN DARKER THAN OURSELVES."
-- David Bowie, Rolling Stone magazine (Feb. 12, 1976)

He was right, the music has gotten darker.

"Hopefully, I'll be remembered as the person who brought an end to Christianity."
-- Marilyn Manson, Spin magazine, August 1996

And just look at this album cover:


Or this one:


And if you're still not convinced check out "Hail Satan," or Black Sabbath's N.I.B. or the Rolling Stones "Sympathy for the Devil."

According to the paranoid conspiracy theorists at Dial-the-Truth Ministries, a phone and internet based evangelical "resource," the devil in music isn't just theatrics and stunts because they really do believe in the Devil:

Modern electronic-rock music, inaugurated in the early 1960s, is, and always has been, a joint enterprise of British military intelligence and Satanic cults. On the one side, the Satanists control the major rock groups through drugs, sex, threats of violence, and even murder. On the other side, publicity, tours, and recordings are financed by record companies connected to British military intelligence circles. Both sides are intimately entwined with the biggest business in the world, the international drug trade.

Of course "Devil music" itself really wasn't inaugurated in the 1960s, it has been around a lot longer. Long, long before we even had enough electricity to power an electric guitar's amplifier, Lucifer was into evil satanic music. There was a Demonic 7th chord long before Rock and Roll existed.

Even before Christianity existed the seemingly supernatural power of music was noted by the ancients, the Sirens could draw men in with their songs and they even tempt Odysseus. Back in the more recent old days Satan favored red violins. So, this is what Satanic music would have sounded like before guitars were electrified:



However, after the Devil lost his gold violin in a bet to some hay chewin' hick from Georgia the violin has taken on a slightly more Christian aura, though nothing like that of the harp. It's nearly impossible to summon satanic feelings with a harp. Or try doing Satanic music with a church's pipe organ.

The next candidate for Devil music was Jazz:

As jazz's popularity grew, so did campaigns to censor "the devil's music." Early detractors like Thomas Edison, inventor of the phonograph, ridiculed jazz, saying it sounded better played backwards. A Cincinnati home for expectant mothers won an injunction to prevent construction of a neighboring theater where jazz would be played, convincing a court that the music was dangerous to fetuses. By the end of the 1920s, at least sixty communities across the nation had enacted laws prohibiting jazz in public dance halls.

So, beware of sax and violins, but unamplified string instruments seem to be okay. The aura of holiness (usually vague, vaporous and hardly there with more higher notes and no strong beat when compared to metal), some unamplified string instruments currently have comes from Christianity's taste for all things old and moldy, for science and modernity itself are satanic. Today some Christians seem to have the impression that all modern music is of the devil and that classical music is of God. Yet, the great classical composers such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven also had to deal with accusations of Satanic influence.

Every innovation in the arts is viewed with suspicion, but eventually the Christian culture overcomes its devil fears of certain sound styles and adopts the new art form. Thus today we have Christian Heavy Metal bands like Barnabas, Bloodgood, Crimson Thorn, Rage of Angels, Seventh Angel and Vengeance Rising. Can you tell the difference between Christian Metal and Satanic Metal? Well, one of those Christian groups, Vengeance Rising, manage to sound more sick, demonic, twisted and EVIL than supposed devil worshiping bands like Morbid Angel.

It's no wonder some Christians say that it's the music itself, so not even Christians can go anywhere near such dark Heavy Metal styling without risking their immortal souls, and without soles you'll have to walk through eternity barefoot, or maybe even on your ankle bones. Don't believe me? Okay, check out this guy:



And that means you Stryper!

Oh my Gawd! There are demons swirling around at even Christian heavy metal concerts. Is being a spiritually discerning Christian like being on acid? Well, those demons aren't visible to me. All I can subjectively pick up on is how it makes me feel, powerful, sexual, strong, dangerous... evil. And I like it. It is pretty irrelevant whether the metal band is Christian, Satanic or secular (are there secular metal bands?) And the proof that rock and roll is the Devil's music, because anything that feels this good has got to be bad.



Yes, they sold their souls for rock and roll, and now they're dead!

Actually, the blues guitarist Robert Johnson is rumored to have sold his soul to the Devil. However, undisputed facts about the Delta Blues artist's life are few and far between and his legend obscures any look at the real man that might be seen in that legend. Like Paganini, anyone with the kind of extraordinary talent and skill that baffles other practitioners of the art will find jealous peers circulating rumors about them. And in credulous times and places where belief in deals with the Devil might seem credible that might be the rumor started. And these days artists might start that rumor themselves just to plug into the supernatural genius aura of the Devil.

Here's the Crossroads song, and here are the lyrics:

Cross Road Blues

I went down to the crossroad
fell down on my knees
I went down to the crossroad
fell down on my knees
Asked the lord above "Have mercy now
save poor Bob if you please"
Yeeooo, standin at the crossroad
tried to flag a ride
ooo ooo eee
I tried to flag a ride
Didn't nobody seem to know me babe
everybody pass me by
Standin at the crossroad babe
risin sun goin down
Standin at the crossroad babe
eee eee eee, risin sun goin down
I believe to my soul now,
Poor Bob is sinkin down
You can run, you can run
tell my friend Willie Brown
You can run, you can run
tell my friend Willie Brown
(th)'at I got the croosroad blues this mornin Lord
babe, I'm sinkin down
And I went to the crossraod momma
I looked east and west
I went to the crossraod baby
I looked east and west
Lord, I didn't have no sweet woman
ooh-well babe, in my distress

Note that Robert Johnson is singing about a plea to "the lord above" (not below) for help. Next a song that mentions Satan and walking "side by side":

Me and the Devil Blues (take 1)

Early this mornin'
when you knocked upon my door
Early this mornin', ooh
when you knocked upon my door
And I said, "Hello, Satan,"
I believe it's time to go."

Me and the Devil
was walkin' side by side
Me and the Devil, ooh
was walkin' side by side
And I'm goin' to beat my woman
until I get satisfied

She say you don't see why
that you will dog me 'round
spoken: Now, babe, you know you ain't doin' me
right, don'cha
She say you don't see why, ooh
that you will dog me 'round
It must-a be that old evil spirit
so deep down in the ground

You may bury my body
down by the highway side
spoken: Baby, I don't care where you bury my
body when I'm dead and gone
You may bury my body, ooh
down by the highway side
So my old evil spirit
can catch a Greyhound bus and ride

I'll leave it at that and let you draw your own conclusions. The next YouTube clip is from Harun Yahya's operation and as always, he blames evolution:



So... atheism and evolution leads to Satanism? All of a sudden I'm going to believe in half of a theology I don't believe in? So what are we to make of all these darker metal bands that really do sing about Satan? Well, I can't get into their heads and you can be completely insane and still be a decent musician, but I think it's mostly done for theatrical effect.

There is an interesting irony in the fact that "Black Metal," the most extreme form of Heavy Metal, comes primarily from Northern Europe, the Nordic / Scandinavian countries, especially Sweden and Finland. While Heavy and even Death Metal are more of a worldwide phenomenon, with many recent groups coming from the U.S., "Black" Metal is essentially Nordic. The irony of this that in spite of the anger, violence, satanic and pathos-laden, and corny as well, music we see here, these countries are, according to Phil Zuckerman's new book (haven't read it), "Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment," some of the most peaceful and happy nations on the planet.

My first impression of Morbid Angel was that there was something profoundly stupid about what they were doing; it was like they took Black Sabbath's most ignorant and fundagelical critics seriously and then they decided to become the band those critics thought Black Sabbath was. And it worked for them! On one level they're a joke so incredulous in their conception that they couldn't be included in the film Spinal Tap without making that film seem too absurd to work. On another level they are probably the best example of an entire subgenre of metal, because they're not alone.

Morbid Angel represents a subgenre of Metal called "Death Metal" where all the groups feature these unintelligible, screaming, growling, throat cancer vocals. (Who is singing that, the cookie monster from Seseame Street?) There is a pounding beat, sparing use of high notes and extremely fuzzed out guitars. The lyrical content is almost always cartoonishly Satanic or repulsively Christian and violent.

It wasn't music to my ears at first. It was interesting to me more as a potentially neat sound effect for a horror movie since the low-pitched guttural growls that pass as vocals are nearly impossible to understand it could work as background music. I think Korn mixes a touch of Death Metal into more traditional Rock and achieves a wider emotional spectrum. Alas, music seems to be fragmenting into emotion specialties. In the old days when I was listening to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin they would include softer, gentler songs in with heavy, pounding rock and an album was a broader emotional trip.

Of course, I've developed a taste for it, but it's just one element of my weirdly eclectic tastes.

And if you've got a taste for it too, come back later and look for new links that will appear on this post. And if you've got some music to turn me on to, drop me a link in the comments section.

This is an in progress post.