Giving the Devil His Due: A Brief Adducement of the Evolution of Metal and Its Use of Satanic Imagery

by Adam Pierce, undergraduate scholar

The late Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, emphatically stated: "The Devil has always had the best tunes" (49) and this could not be further from the truth when examining metal. Despite its many commercially invented subsidiaries, the oxymoronic "Christian Metal" being one of the most blatant, this genre has embraced the dark one's earthly nature with open arms and incorporated his qualities into an ever changing counter culture. This paper chronicles the evolution of metal and the peculiar, yet powerful artistic and philosophical Satanic influence that has shaped its many facets.

The Horn Bearer

Metal's roots can first be uncovered in the African American blues artists of the 1930's whose dark portrayal of reality was thought of as "devil songs" by their more religious brethren (Weinstein 38). One of the blues's most influential artists, Robert Johnson, emerged during the end of a decade that had been under the yoke of particular aspects of Christian rule, especially Progressivism and Prohibition. The dark, swampy landscape of the Mississippi Delta was still sparse with small towns, massive plantations, and one of its natives, a young sharecropper, wore its humidity as both a protective and loathsome burden. The bearer of this armor was Robert Johnson.

Johnson began playing guitar in the late 1920's, but did not take up the instrument seriously until after the death of his wife and child. Johnson, who was never a strong player, envied the lives of the musicians he came into contact with and emerged in the growing blues scene with fury and fire. When asked by his contemporaries how his playing had advanced so quickly Johnson simply stated that he had sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads while out walking one night. Such nightly walks and playing guitar in the woods alone were two mysterious activities he could often be found doing. What Johnson had done was mastered the position of openly defying Christianity that many young musicians would strive for decades later.

Johnson seemed to embody all the principles that contemporary Satanism would be based on over thirty years later: individualism, indulgence, doing unto others as they do unto you, and a basic lust for life. These principles were celebrated in his music and lifestyle as he was known for his womanizing and brazen attitude, but often times these qualities seemed to haunt him as well. Even though many of his other songs confidently speak of outsmarting the Devil, the haunting ballad "Crossroad Blues," a recollection of that unholy pact, predicts his soul will soon be reclaimed. The simplicity of the one-take recording allows the listener to embrace the passion in Johnson's chaotic rhythms, heartfelt wails, and the almost earthy overtones of the old analog recording process gives the final piece a blatant authenticity.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Thirty years after Johnson's death there was a musical resurrection across the Atlantic. Young, white, middle class British youths had discovered the blues and for some, more importantly, Robert Johnson. Out of this new movement came the founders of metal, a title often given to Led Zeppelin, but despite their fascination with Aleister Crowley and Jimmy Page's emulation of his lifestyle, they lacked the sound and projection of metal's true mise-en-scene.

It was another band formed about a year before Led Zeppelin in the industrial town of Birmingham that overtly spread the disease of darkness to the masses. Three friends had formed the blues based rock band named Earth and after recruiting a young schoolmate named John Osbourne, to take up vocals, the band changed their name to the more menacing Black Sabbath.

Similar to Led Zeppelin and numerous others, Black Sabbath was heavily influenced by the early American blues artists, but what set these young lads apart from the rest was their ability to capture the dark realism that those early blues artists had captured with an eerie precision. It was surely their agrarian roots and fascination with magic that made Black Sabbath's doom laden riffs and piercing wails reminiscent of Johnson's chaotic guitar playing, unconventional approach to rhythm, and angst filled vocals. Guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler pioneered the constant usage of tuned down guitars and mesmerizing Largo rhythms (one of the slowest tempos on the metronomic scale) that would later be emulated by a host of up and coming metal acts. The muddy guitars, rabid vocals, and dark lyrical content were more Satanic than anything Page could muster out of a Crowley induced stupor and the artwork of Black Sabbath's self-titled debut was all but subtle. On the album cover a woman draped in black stands in the foreground of an old ruinous house surrounded by a sea of dormant trees, which in their lifeless stage are a reminder of the Earth's constant renewal. It was surely no mistake that Black Sabbath chose the dying season for their debut artwork. The lyrical content was just as disturbing addressing all of mankind's horrors such as war, famine, and the corruption of the Christian Church while the infamous song "Nativity in Black," a pact with the Devil, gave Lucifer a seemingly loving character.

During the course of their career with Osbourne Black Sabbath's evil sound remained consistent even though the members themselves often espoused contradictory philosophies which surfaced through interviews: "'We're into God' Iommi unhelpfully explained, to which drummer Bill Ward added, 'But sometimes I feel Satan is God'" (Baddeley 94). Little did it matter what was said, the walls of sound they constructed could not be broken down and the projection of darkness remained consistent and influenced the hydraheaded system that metal would soon become.

Hypertensity, Satan, & Juvenile Rebellion

Ten years after the formation of Black Sabbath metal had become another bland rendition of pop music, but another emerging movement would soon rejuvenate it. The Punk rebellion had erupted in England in the mid 1970's and shortly followed in the U.S. Metal had lost its menacing demeanor and Punk had gained the notoriety as the new way to deter from the right. Again it would be a few young Englishmen who would take any blasphemous antics they could get their creative hands on and multiply it by six. In 1979, after ridding themselves of their Christian names, Newcastle residents Cronos, Mantas, and Abaddon formed Venom, taking aspects from both punk and metal, an amalgamation the scene terribly needed. As Abaddon explains: "We'd take some of the diabolical content of Black Sabbath and we'd mix it with some of the stage presence of Kiss, and the originality of Deep Purple" (Moynihan 10). Their music was the now typical blues based rock, but it was sped up with the fury of punk and as a result of this they attracted fans from both scenes to their live performances, something that was unheard of before Venom. The imagery was blatant: they took the antics of Kiss's stage show to more extreme levels and in '81 debuted with "Welcome to Hell," an album full of fast paced Satanic metal whose album cover featured a full page baphoment. People could not help but know what they were getting into.

Americans saw an equivalent movement as the Misfits, fronted by the enigmatic Glenn Danzig, who emerged like a cloud of locusts on the East Coast punk scene. With their B-grade horror film image they challenged all the political and drugfree movements that had been emerging. In 1986, Glenn Danzig left the East Coast Misfits for Los Angeles, where he would start one of the most influential Satanic metal bands to date. After a short stint as Sam Hain, the band recruited drummer Chuck Biscuits of the legendary punk outfit Black Flag. Since Glenn Danzig wrote the majority of the music, the band, Sam Hain, simply became Danzig. Their odd blend of blues based metal and Danzig's twisted Elvis like vocals, not to mention their abrasive Satanic imagery, gained them instant notoriety. By 1990 there was no questioning the moving forces behind their music. Their second album, "Lucifuge," had been released and inside the inner sleeve glared verse 8:44 of St. John "Ye are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do." Through the years the bands imagery grew even darker as Danzig openly spoke of his Satanic philosophies and even composed an album of Satanic orchestral music. Unlike Venom, Danzig's imagery was not just a marketing gimmick and ironically the bands trademark, the skull of some demonic goat-bull hybrid, became one of the most recognized symbols in metal and Danzig himself a true "limb of Satan" (Clemens 751).

Simultaneously, a new underground movement was laying waste to the Scandinavian countryside and literally terrorizing the hell out of its citizens. This new wave of pagan influenced teens took the ferocity of Venom's music and the seriousness of Danzig's projected imagery, which created a vicious combination. Adding their own technical proficiency in composing the Norsemen proudly brandished the beast "Black Metal" after the title of Venom's 1982 album. These musicians, many of whom had been trained since early childhood, took metal to the furthest reaches possible combining classical elements with the storytelling quality of the old Norse myths, adding a speed and agility that would make the common musician cringe.

Under this skillful artwork lay a rabid contempt for the Christian Church and many followers of the movement took to burning churches and in a few cases even murder. All was justified in a twisted ideology of Social Darwinism and a rejuvenation of the old Scandinavian Pagan religions, which had in fact met the same fiery fate when the Christian conquerors invaded Scandinavia in the Eighth Century. The world had never seen such an extreme movement of black clad, pentagram wearing teens that not only consisted of the fans causing the havoc, but a few of the musicians as well. Newspapers throughout Europe gave their front pages to the strange occurrences and popular American magazines such as Rolling Stone and Spin also featured pieces about the destructive Black Metal movement.

Norway, which boasts one of the highest standards of living in the world as well as a 100% literacy rate, is an odd setting for such an abrasive counter culture. Ihsahn, front man of the legendary Black Metal group Emperor, theorizes the oddity of this rebellion: "The Norwegian State Church is not strict at all. I think its quite funny, we have female bishops and priests, and we have homosexual priests and homosexual marriages, which is very much against what is said in the Bible. The State Church in Norway is very liberal" (Moynihan 197). When asked about the catalysts of these teen's violent nature he unhelpfully adds:

My parents are not religious at all. Normal people assume 'Oh, people into Black Metal must have had a terrible childhood and have been molested. They're weak and come from terrible backgrounds.' But as far as I'm concerned, many people I know in the scene actually come from good families, and had a great childhood with very nice parents and no pressure at all. Quite wealthy families actually. (Moynihan 197)

It is indeed their fascination with the lost indigenous Pagan traditions and their untimely disappearance that has caused this extreme backlash to contemporary society. However, along with the burnt frames of churches and shock to a rather dormant society, these musicians left their own brand of metal that had been taken to the furthest reaches musically and aesthetically.

Back to Soil: The De-evolution Process

After the Norse revolution the American underground saw Black Metal's extension into most notably the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts and the similar rolling countryside of Virginia. The juxtaposition of different types of metal had reached what seemed to be its furthest boundaries. While the Norwegian extremists were fighting their ongoing battle with the Church, American suburbanites had extrapolated the music and the Satanic imagery while disbanding the terrorist tactics and black metal garb. The two aforementioned scenes thrived and soon spread to the Midwest. It seemed as though metal had reached its furthest scope, with every dark corner of the underground being occupied by the slow, monotonous tones of doom metal and the high velocity percussive attacks of grindcore (America's bastard child of Black Metal). There certainly was nothing new under the sun and an extreme occurrence was necessary, a new route found amidst this creative eclipse. It would be the Amphetamine induced modern guitar work and analog synth generated ambiance of Olympia, WA resident Dylan Carlson and his aptly titled project "Earth" that would inspire a few Satanists with yet another untraveled road into the darkness.

The West Coast, most notably San Francisco, had begun to see a resurgence of the cultural movements of the disenchanted 1960's and the birthplace of modern Satanism became a hot bed for Sabbath influenced Satanic metal. This new wave of Satanists were much more traditional in appearance and musicianship than their armor clad Black Metal counterparts, but shared the same creative approach to music. Like the Norwegians they would look to the past to find a new road into the future.

The two forefathers of the scene, bands Goatsnake and Burning Witch, sharing the same admiration for Dylan Carlson's unconventional approach to the guitar, coalesced in 1998 to create Sunn 0))) named respectively after the 1970's amplifiers notorious for their thunderous low end. What initially started as an Earth tribute band, the members of Sunn 0))) soon took guitar drone ambiance to a level that made Carlson's compositions seem like structured operandums. Technically Sunn 0))) had taken things back to the bare essentials resembling Robert Johnson more so than Black Sabbath or any other obvious correlation. Like Johnson, the guitar is the primary instrument and all songs are recorded live, a technique that is almost completely absent in the technologically advanced music industry of today. Sunn 0)))'s disgustingly detuned guitar invocations are more like a carefully crafted and channeled audio earthquake than a musical composition and it is rumored the frequencies of their only two live appearances sent some innocent onlookers running for the bathroom. The melodies found in Johnson's music are absent, but the tone of the earthly odes that he pioneered are ever present, yet redefined. The sonic difference is obtrusive, but as Johnson's rural world of the Mississippi Delta lay almost untouched by technology's toxic disease, the current state of the West Coast is a grossly obvious example of man's infliction on the Earth. As Johnson stood at the crossroads and felt the "hell hound" on his tail, the members of Sunn 0))) can drive down Interstate 5 and notice a similar gloom in the smog ridden sky. Sunn 0)))'s music is not simply the next step, but a dirge for the Earth and for metal. The primitiveness of their emissions destroy the conventional structure of the genre and this delineation from the traditional opens the door for the next pioneers, whoever they may be, but surely the Devil will be the driver at the reigns.

 

Works Cited

Baddeley, Gavin. Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship, & Rock n' Roll. London: Plexus, 1999.

Clemens, Samuel (Mark Twain). "Life on the Mississippi." A College Book of American Literature. Ed. Milton Ellis. New York: American Book Company, 1940 (743-752).

La Vey, Anton. The Satanic Bible. New York: Avon Books, 1969.

Moynihan, Michael and Didrik Soderlind. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Venice, CA: Feral House, 1998.

Weinstein, Deena. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. De Capo, 2000.