HELL HAS ALL THE BEST BANDS
A Brief History of Devilish Hard Rock
By Dan Epstein
Photo by Joseph Cultice
He goes by many names: Old Nick, the Prince of Darkness, the Beast, the Lord of This World, the Tempter, Mephistopheles, the Serpent, Lucifer, and oftentimes just plain ol’ Satan. Whatever you choose to call him, chances are he’ll be at the next metal show you attend, even if it’s just in the form of a pentagram patch on somebody’s leather jacket or an upside-down crucifix tattoo on a swatch of exposed skin. For no other nonmusical figure has been quite so closely associated with (or as influential upon) hard rock and heavy metal as the Devil. Dracula? Not even close. Thor and the Norse gods? Please. Conan the Barbarian? Sorry, Manowar, but the answer is no.
What is it with the Satan/metal connection? Is heavy metal, as some would charge, actually “the Devil’s music”? Do the bands that load up their songs and album artwork with Hellish imagery truly believe that they are doing the Devil’s work? Why does the Devil remain a potent symbol of rebellion in an age when rebellious trends are snapped up, neutered, and mass-marketed to the mainstream quicker than you can say “pop punk”? Read on, fellow sinners, and learn…
The concept of “the Devil’s music” began long before rock and heavy metal even existed. The first known attempt to protect listeners from the “Satanic” power of music occurred all the way back in the Middle Ages, when the Roman Catholic Church decided that the tritone musical interval (i.e., two notes forming an augmented fourth) was too discordant and unsettling for the good Christian ear to handle. Dubbed “the Devil’s interval”—or, in the Latin of the day, Diabolus in Musica (hence the title of Slayer’s 1998 record)—the tritone was summarily banned from use in church music. But it’s been utilized quite often in the secular world—notably, in the opening notes of Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath,” from their 1970 debut album of the same name.
In the classical era of the 1800s, displays of impressive musical proficiency were often credited to Satan. Giuseppe Tartini, an 18th-century Italian violinist and composer, was best known for his “Devil’s Trill” sonata, a work so technically demanding that it was alleged that the Devil himself had come to Tartini in a dream and taught it to him. But the classical composer most closely associated with the Horned One was Italian violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini. The ultimate “rock star” of his day (and a major influence on guitar wiz Yngwie Malmsteen), the gaunt and intense Paganini dazzled European audiences in the early 1800s with his incredible physical dexterity and personal magnetism. It was rumored that the violinist—who spent much of his downtime gambling and chasing women—had struck a Faustian bargain with the Devil, selling his soul in exchange for his remarkable ability. Enjoying his notoriety, the decadent Paganini did little to dispel the rumors.
Nearly a hundred years after Paganini’s death, similar whispers were heard throughout Mississippi about a blues guitarist named Robert Johnson. Johnson, so the story went, was a mediocre guitarist who left home for a year, then returned able to outplay anyone in the South. Johnson had allegedly gone to a crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to cut a midnight deal with the Devil, swapping his eternal soul for an arsenal of hot licks. Hell and Satan figured prominently in several of Johnson’s spooky songs, and the mystery surrounding the bluesman’s life and death—he died at the age of 27, and supposedly spent his last night on earth howling at the moon like a mad dog—has only added an extra layer of luster to his legend.
Outside of the blues idiom, plenty of 20th-century songs referenced the Devil, but they were humorous in nature, à la Elvis Presley’s 1963 hit “The Devil in Disguise.” It wasn’t until the mid 1960s that the concept of the Devil as evil incarnate began to take hold. One of the first recorded examples was “He’s Waitin’,” a savage 1966 rave-up by Seattle garage band the Sonics (from their album The Sonics Boom), in which singer Gerry Roslie tells his cheating girlfriend that not only is she going to Hell for her sins but that Satan is already licking his infernal lips in anticipation of her arrival. And 13 years before Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast,” British psychedelic band Jason Crest told a similar tale of stumbling across a Satanic ritual with their disturbing 1969 single “Black Mass.” Too radical for their time, neither of these songs achieved much in the way of sales or airplay. A similar fate, however, did not befall the Rolling Stones.
Initially cast as the bad-boy counterparts of the Beatles, the Stones did their best to live up to their nasty reputation by shagging debutantes, pissing on gas-station walls, and flaunting their recreational drug use. By 1968, with flower power in full swing, the Stones decided to push the envelope even further in the other direction, officially aligning themselves with the forces of darkness with the song “Sympathy for the Devil.” Inspired by Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical 1966 novel The Master and Margarita, in which the Devil pays a visit to the Soviet Union, Stones singer Mick Jagger sang “Sympathy” from Lucifer’s point of view, gleefully taking credit for everything from Jesus Christ’s “moment of doubt and pain” during the Crucifixion to the recent assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. Many observers felt that the Stones had gone too far this time; and when the band’s 1969 concert at California’s Altamont Speedway was marred by violent confrontations between their fans and (ironically enough) the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, the band was widely excoriated for unleashing dark forces that they were unable to control.
But the first truly Satanic album in rock history was Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls, released in 1969 by a Chicago band called Coven. The entire second side of the album was taken up by the recording of an actual Black Mass; however, the band’s music—a wispy mix of folk-rock and psychedelic pop—didn’t quite live up to their dark image, or to song titles like “Dignitaries of Hell” and “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.” (What, you thought Van Hagar came up with it first?)
Perhaps if they’d sounded more like Black Sabbath, they might have sold some records. In fact, when it comes to Satan and hard rock, no band has been more misunderstood than Sabbath. Though they certainly referenced the Devil in numerous songs, their lyrics were more about acknowledging the existence of evil than promoting it. In “War Pigs,” from 1971’s Paranoid, Satan laughs as foolhardy generals plot to start another war, knowing that they’re the ones who are doing his bidding, while “Black Sabbath” is a cautionary tale about a dabbler in the Black Arts who accidentally conjures Satan. But between the band’s name, their dark and heavy sound, and the image of an upside-down cross that the Warner Bros. art department slipped inside the cover of their first album (without the band’s permission), Black Sabbath have never been fully able to shake their Satanic reputation, even among their diehard fans.
“People never want to listen to the lyrics,” chief Sabbath wordsmith Geezer Butler explained in 2001. “Like, ‘N.I.B.’ [a standout cut from Sabbath’s self-titled debut] is taking the piss out of the Devil. I can’t just write a straight love song, so it’s like, ‘Fine! I’ll make the Devil fall in love!’ If you take the Satan out of it, it’s just about this guy who falls in love. And he comes up with all the clichés, like he can give you the moon and the stars—but he can! [Laughs] But a lot of people missed the point. They thought we were being pro-Satan and all of that.”
Led Zeppelin were another legendary hard-rock band perpetually dogged by Satanic rumors. According to popular myth, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Bonham signed a pact with the Devil at the start of Zep’s career, thus assuring them monumental fame and fortune (a legend that echoes the story of Robert Johnson, whose music was quite influential upon the band). The story goes that bassist John Paul Jones demurred from signing the Hellish document, which is supposedly why he’s the only member of Zep who hasn’t died (as did Bonham in 1980, not long after downing 36 shots of vodka only in a few hours), lost a young son to illness (Plant, in 1977) or made a terrible record with Whitesnake’s David Coverdale (Page, who released Coverdale/Page in 1993).
This rumor seems to stem primarily from Page’s obsession with notorious British occultist Aleister Crowley; to this day, the guitarist is said to own one of the most impressive collections of Crowley books and artifacts in the world. (Drummer Danny Carey of Tool is also known to be a serious collector of Crowleyana.) But Crowley, though he claimed to have conjured all manner of demons and ancient gods in arcane ceremonies, was not a Satanist, and there’s no evidence that Page or any other member of Led Zeppelin was, either. Unless, of course, you believe that “Stairway to Heaven” contains hidden Satanic messages.
In his epic 17th-century poem Paradise Lost, John Milton wrote that, from Satan’s perspective, it is “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n.” While it’s unlikely that any member of AC/DC ever read Milton, their songs like “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be,” “Highway to Hell,” and “Hell’s Bells” certainly conveyed a similar attitude. Panicky Christian fundamentalists tried to paint the band as Satanic (Angus Young’s “Li’l Devil” ensemble on the cover of 1979’s Highway to Hell was generally cited as Exhibit A), even claiming that their name stood for “Anti-Christ/Devil’s Child.” But as with so many bands that have followed them, AC/DC’s musical invocations of Hell and Satan were merely emblematic of a rejection of “straight” society, as well as of the Christian notion that one must forego earthly pleasures in order to attain a Heavenly reward. Like the Devil himself, rock music has always been concerned with immediate gratification, and AC/DC’s brand of hellraising revolved entirely around the fleshly delights of whisky, beer, and sex. Chanting, raising demons, and “kissing the goat”? Bon Scott would’ve never played that shit.
It wasn’t until the Eighties that heavy-metal artists really began to embrace Satan (or at least Satanic imagery) on a grand scale. Some, like Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne (now gone solo from Black Sabbath), were merely entertainers who understood the titillation value of spicing up their records with titles such as The Number of the Beast and Speak of the Devil; ditto for Mötley Crüe, even though bassist Nikki Sixx did admit in the band’s 2001 autobiography, The Dirt, to having a brief flirtation with Satanism during the Crüe’s early days. (Realizing that he didn’t know what he was doing, Sixx wisely threw his occult books away after claiming to have witnessed silverware flying through his apartment of its own volition.)
But for bands like Slayer, Venom, Mercyful Fate, and Bathory (the latter is generally credited with being the first band to feature a goat’s head on the cover of their self-titled 1984 album)—who were infinitely darker and more uncompromising than anyone in the metal mainstream—invoking the name of Satan was a means to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. Both Venom and King Diamond of Mercyful Fate were adherents of The Satanic Bible, a 1969 book written by Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, whose philosophy (much of which has to do with being strong and true to yourself as an individual, and—contrary to popular belief—has nothing to do with animal sacrifice) has been extremely influential on a high percentage of so-called Satanic artists over the past few decades. (Perhaps none more than Marilyn Manson, who LaVey personally ordained as a Priest of the Church of Satan in 1994). Slayer used the same book for lyrical inspiration on early albums like 1985’s Hell Awaits, though none of the band members were actual Satanists. As Gavin Baddeley writes in his excellent Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship & Rock ’N’ Roll (Plexus Books, 1999), “Slayer were purely celebrating the catharsis of aggression, frustration, and pain through music. Slayer’s Satan was a god of apocalyptic destruction, a symbol of deep alienation, and blind rage.”
In the U.S., the self-proclaimed Moral Majority—a nationwide organization of political-action committees led by the Christian Right—had become increasingly influential since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and it was only a matter of time before they drew a bead on the Satanic doings in the metal world. In 1985, the Parents Music Resource Center was founded in Washington, D.C., ostensibly to educate parents on “alarming trends” in the music industry. Though Slayer must have been too obscure at the time to qualify, both Mercyful Fate’s “In the Coven” and Venom’s “Possessed” made the PMRC’s “Filthy Fifteen” list of objectionable songs.
While the PMRC never succeeded in banning the Filthy Fifteen (nor, for that matter, any other song that disgusted them), they did wonders for the street credibility of any metal band that dared to walk on the Satanic side. Within no time, pentagrams were popping up on album covers like dandelions, and American bands like Morbid Angel and Deicide (whose leader, Glen Benton, branded his forehead with an upside-down metal cross) were giving politicians, preachers, and pundits a whole new batch of records to wet themselves over.
But it was all the way over in Scandinavia that the next wave of Satanic metal was really getting under way. Following in the footsteps of Mercyful Fate and Bathory, and naming their genre after a Venom album, Scandinavian black-metal bands like Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor, Immortal, Darkthrone, and Gorgoroth devoted themselves with utmost seriousness to the Satanic metal cause. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have always had something of an ambivalent relationship with Christianity, as they were among the last European countries to renounce their pagan ways in favor of the Christian Church. This gave the black-metal movement an extra antisocial nuance—not only were these bands making the most extreme music around but they were doing it in protest against a religion they felt had been illegally foisted upon their forefathers. Though many Scandinavian black-metal bands would later discard it in favor of old Norse religions, Satanism initially served as both an important rallying point and a badge of “outsider” status.
However, debate still rages over whether the blame for the church-burning incidents involving, among other musicians, Mayhem’s Euronymous and Varg Vikernes of Burzum (and the subsequent murder of the former by the latter) can be placed at the cloven hooves of the Devil. Were Euronymous and Vikernes truly committing blasphemy in the service of Satan? Or were they just two competitive delinquents determined to out-evil each other? Just like with Christianity—or with black metal, for that matter—there are infinite opinions as to what constitutes “true” Satanism.
More than halfway into the first decade of the new millennium, the Devil shows no signs of relinquishing his vice-like grip upon hard rock and heavy metal. He’s there in HIM’s humorously conceived heartagram insignia, in the very name of Fireball Ministry and label Southern Lord, in the atmospheric goth-metal of Cradle of Filth, and in Avenged Sevenfold’s epic track “The Beast and the Harlot” (from last year’s City of Evil), the video of which features numerous demonic transformations and manifestations. But El Diablo has his pointy fingers in punk rock, as well; Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio is a card-carrying member of the Church of Satan, while AFI have given the Devil his due in several of their songs (including “The Devil Loves You” off of 1997’s Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes).
Call it a codependent relationship, if you like: Each successive generation throws up new bands that want to prove that they are dark, dangerous, and maybe even evil, while the Devil always needs new messengers to remind the masses that he might actually be real. As long as evil remains a fascinating subject to write about, as long as the holier-than-thou brigades continue to get bent out of shape at the merest mention of Satan, and as long as potential Presidential candidates try to score political points by sanctimoniously singling out one band or another as a threat to our children and/or the American way of life, rebellious rockers will continue to push the “Devil” button. See you in Hell, my friends.
