Satanism as Social Commentary

So, when I was growing up several members of my family and friends worried about my love for rock music. I think my father would have preferred I stuck to choir, but he was happy I continued singing. My mother was scared about the "drugs" part of the sex, drugs and rock n roll meme.

But some of my close friends were more worried about satanism. Hell, there are whole movements on the web that warn of the satanic cult behind the music industry, that somehow think that because a number of rappers saw the movie Rainman and decided that it would be a cool handle, Rainman must be some Illuminati code for Satan.

My friends, though, were more worried about heavy metal in general, and the tendency to make reference to the devil in his various guises. They also worried about my love for Dungeons and Dragons, which would also lead to my slow induction into the ranks of satanism... apparently.

It's not like Heavy Metal wasn't asking for it, of course. KISS may, or may not, stand for Knights In Satan's Service, and WASP may, or may not, stand for We Are Satan's People, but it's pretty undeniable that with David  Lee Roth claiming that he was Running with the Devil, Slayer decorating their cover art with pentagrams and goat headed demons and Black Sabbath being, well, Black Sabbath, Heavy Metal was pretty much fishing for Christian outrage with goat-headed worms.

It is not always thus, however. Yes, Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath was a song about meeting Satan, and little else, as best I can tell, but as a result we overlook the fact that Ozzy Osbourne was, and is, an evolution of the Hippy movement. Want proof? Look at Children of the Grave, a song title that just screams to be a 60's b-movie (it wouldn't be made into a b-movie until 2007), and yet the songs ends with lyrics that could have easily be taken from a folk song as a metal song.

So you children of the world,
listen to what I say
If you want a better place to live in
spread the words today
Show the world that love is still alive
you must be brave 

Black Sabbath, "Children of the Grave"

from Master of Reality, 1971

One of the tidbits you learn while watching Sam Dunn's fantastic documentary Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, is that the "devil's horns", the hand-sign created by holding up your pinky and index fingers, was imported  into Black Sabbath by Ronnie Dio to replace the peace sign that Ozzy had made his hallmark. Yes, the Blizzard of Ozz... Mr Crowley... the Prince of Darkness was a hippy, which is hardly surprising considering he grew up inspired by the Beatles. (The true credit should go to Geezer Butler, however, who was often the bands lyricist; committed vegan and PETA supporter).

Thing was, a lot of early Sabbath satanic imagery is really social criticism. Take War Pigs, originally Walpurgis, which apparently was about witchcraft, but changed under pressure from the record company:

Generals gather in their masses

Just like witches at black masses

Black Sabbath, "War Pigs"

from Paranoid, 1970

OK, negative points for rhyming masses with masses, but the song continues, critiquing the relationship between politics and war. 

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor 

So the supposed satanism is no more than a restating of Jean-Paul Satre's dictum "when the rich wage war, it's the poor that die". That quote, by the way, can be found in his play "The Devil and the Good Lord". Perhaps Satre gets away with it because of the reference to "the Good Lord" in the title, which itself is misleading because it refers not to God, but to a war criminal whose acts of goodness may just be the pretense for greater evil.

The Rolling Stones' song Sympathy for the Devil (which was also 60's arthouse film, rather than b-movie) is another song that drew ire for satanic imagery. After all, why would the devil deserve our sympathy? It's not until you listen for a bit that you realise the laundry list of calamities, from Pilate's execution of Christ to the execution of the Kennedy brothers, all supposedly caused by the devil, has very little to do with the devil and a lot to do with humankind.

I watched with glee
while your kings and queens
fought for ten decades
for the Gods they made

The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"

from Beggar's Banquet, 1968

And again:

I shouted out "Who killed the Kennedy's"

When after all

It was you and me.

Of course, if you speak of the devil, apparently he appears, and Sympathy for the Devil was falsely accused of causing the death of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont Free Concert. In fact the song that was playing during Hunter's death was actually Under My Thumb. But like the song, if you're looking, the real devils were men with guns and knives. 

While the 80's did feature its fair share of bands trying to cash in on the shock value of satanism, much was also ignorantly misinterpreted. Judas Priest got their supposedly satanic name from a song by Bob Dylan, for example, and many of their references to sin are better explained by the church's attitudes to Rob Halford's then closeted homosexuality, rather than deals with Lucifer and pacts made on the crossroads. 

Likewise, both Iron Maiden and Metallica seemed to confuse many Christians by writing songs based on stories from the bible. The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden, for example, opens with a reading from Revelation 13:18, and proceeds to retell the story of the Book of Revelation itself. Before Pulp Fiction, that quote from Revelation was probably the most quoted bible scripture in the circle of my friends that listened to heavy metal.

Similarly, Creeping Death by Metallica retells the story of the Plagues of Egypt from the Book of Exodus, a story James Hetfield learned from his strict Christian Scientist parents when he was young. 

It's a bit ripe to accuse a band of satanism when they're actually quoting the bible. 

Even Christian metal band Stryper was accused of satanism based on the appearance of a pentagram on the cover their album To Hell with the Devil. Forget the fact that the pentagram has been physically torn off the neck of a demonic being and thrown away...

But I digress.

Chronologically, this is probably where I should mention Marilyn Manson, but my view on Manson is full of contradictions. He gets some of his arguments right, but for some of the wrong reasons, and at the end of the day I find him anti-climatic. He has an exceptional setup, but the center of the argument he makes is ultimately hollow. He knocks down the old social mores for so many righteous reasons, but has nothing to replace it with.  I need an entire blog on this.

And for the most part, Satanism in music has become something of a joke. Tool's Die Eire Von Satan certainly sounds like an homage to Satan, complete with backwards masking. Instead it turns out to be cake recipe. Sum 41 created a fake band called Pain for Pleasure that mocked the entire idea of satanic rock and roll, taking the imagery to such an extreme that it became impossible to take seriously.

But perhaps it is Nine Inch Nails who have truly usurped the satanism as social commentary, by suggesting that perhaps it is that which is held up as holy is in fact the truly evil.

What if this whole crusade's
A charade
And behind it all there's a price to be paid
For the blood
On which we dine
Justified in the name of the holy and the divine

Nine Inch Nails, "The Hand that Feeds"

from With Teeth, 2005

Dining on blood? It sounds like a satanic rite, but is instead a sacrament of Christianity. It's certainly hard to argue that some truly evil acts have been carried out in the name of Christ, and while it is not necessarily invoking Satan, The Hand That Feeds points out that blind obedience, even blind obedience to a loving God, can be usurped for less than noble purposes.

Children of Concrete and Steel

My all time favourite lyric comes from a song by Living Colour called Type, and it's one of those lyrics that make you want to scream at the band for not being as beautiful with the rest of the song.

We are the children of concrete and steel

This is the place where the truth is concealed

This is the time when the lie is revealed

Everything is possible, but nothing is real

Living Colour, "Type"

on Times Up, 1990

The rest of the song is merely a laundry list of different ism's, but that simple quatrain is such a stunning image for me, and the first line one of the most beautiful invocations of life in cities. 

To me, rock n roll has always been a battle between its roots in the city and its roots in the suburbs, but so very few songs seem to invoke the city as anything more than a place to party. The ones that do, however, seem to strike a cord with me, even more now that I've come to live in big cities. Take Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues:

Johnny's in the Basement

Mixing up medicine

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government

The man in the trench coat

Badge out, laid off

Says he's got a bad cough

Wants to get paid off

Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"

on Bringing It All Back Home, 1965

The city is this corrupt, broken world torn between the counter culture trying to get by and the "system" who seem just as broken and beaten. I was surprised to find out that it was born out of the song "Taking it Easy" by Woodie Guthrie and "Too Much Monkey Business" by Chuck Berry, both of which deal with a common man caught in a corrupt system. 

Dylan also name-checked Jack Kerouac, but it sounds a bit more like Allen Ginsberg to me, particularly An Open Window on Chicago with its series of still shots of the city; "towers winking under clouds", "The girl at the counter", "black uniforms patrolling streets". Actually, this will sound sacrilegious to some, but one of the closest similarities I have seen to Ginsberg's Open Window would actually be Fort Minor's Right Now. 

there's somebody on the curb who really needs a jacket
spent half the rent at a bar getting plastered
Now he gotta walk fourteen blocks
to work at a shop where he's about to get fired.

Fort Minor, "Right Now"

on The Rising Tide, 2005

Not quite the same barrage of imagery as Ginsberg, but then they have the limitations of  beats and rhymes that Ginsberg was free from. The chorus even invokes the same background noise of a television that haunts Ginsberg's poem:

I'm just taking it in
From the second story hotel window again,
The TV's on, and my bags are packed,
But in this world everything can change just like that,

I guess the difference, however, is sustaining the imagery. We explore the same themes, the same images, but as lyricists we feel the need to comment, to explain the moral. Ginsberg is able just keep describing, keep invoking the city. As lyricists we feel the need to pontificate, deliver a chorus that will tie everything together. There is the conflict between exploration and succinctness, elaboration and conciseness. We have to deliver a hook for people to sing along with. We can describe the city in the verse, but at some point we need to deliver the chorus. 

Take T.S.Elliot's Preludes:

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots

T.S.Elliot, "Preludes"

His city can just be dirty, and the people in it dirty, but he does not need to deliver his evaluation for your appraisal. In a way, he gets away with condemning the city because he doesn't need to say he condemns it. For rock lyricists, there seems to be a need to find the meaning for the audience. Linkin Park have the ability to explore the same dirt and grime:

There's a place so dark you can't see the end 

Skies cock back and shock that which can't defend
The rain then sends dripping acidic questions
Forcefully, the power of suggestion
Then with the eyes tightly shut looking thought the rust and rotten dust
A spot of light floods the floor
And pours over the rusted world of pretend
The eyes ease open and its dark again 

Linkin Park, "Forgotten"

on Hybrid Theory, 1999

But then they have to deliver the explanation.

In the memory you'll find me
Eyes burning up
The darkness holding me tightly
Until the sun rises up 

They can't leave the loneliness unstated, as Elliot does. They have to explain the metaphor is a metaphor for us. 

Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to denigrate song lyrics. This is the conflict between the city and the suburbs. If you've been in the city, nobody has to explain that it's can be a dark lonely place, no matter how many flashing lights there are, but rock is also for the kids in the suburbs. It has to connect with the masses. So it is that even a band like System of a Down, that can be as oblique and obfuscating with their lyrics as the best "artistes", can't help but spell out the moral when they describe life in the city:

Now what do you own, the world?

How do you own disorder

System of a Down, "Toxicity"

on Toxicity, 2001

Somehow, we have to be both beautiful and practical. We have to delve into the city, but come back and describe it to the suburbs. We must both sketch and navigate, shade and map.