Evil Side Of Music
By Strings Direct – 29 August, 2023
So Halloween is much to do about scary stuff, and music is a tool for creating emotions and messages, so let’s look at fear and darkness in music shall we?
Fear What is scary music? To answer that question you’d possibly pick something from a movie like the two notes played when Jaws was coming or Tubular Bells from the Exorcist.
Scary music has been around for centuries and I’m going to go as far back as the 1800’s for this blog. Imagine an age when the church had its grip on literacy and music. In those days even the flattened 5th interval from the major scale was considered “Of The devil” and frowned upon when used in compositions.
Here is Dance Macabre, which is French for ‘dance of death’; this was written in 1872 and this composition has the obvious theme of death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLCuL-K39eQ
Night On Bald Mountain, as used in the film Fantasia, is a Russian composition on the theme of the Witches’ Black Mass - I imagine this went down like a lead balloon in the church:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLCuL-K39eQ
Conspiracy Theory About The Devil In Music Is there a conspiracy to use music to convert us to whatever the Puppet Master wants us to believe? Probably not… or is there?
Before we consider the spiritual presence of Satan that is said to be woven into some music forms let’s look at more actual evils like:
War Music is widely used in war and torture, thrash metal has been played while US troop tanks motor into battle and demonic metal played to Jihad prisoners to torment them.
Drugs Music has been the central tool of the drug culture for many years, from the first days of LSD to the chemical rave culture of today.
Hypnotic Cults Many festivals will have side tents with hypnotic, almost spiritual worship of new age or almost Mantras of Eastern styles that could be used by cults to hypnotize the listeners.
The Dark Side Of The Farce Metal styles of music are notorious for using dark images that glorify evil, suffering and death to go with that dark sounding riffage.
Ozzy Osbourne from Black Sabbath (named after a gathering of Witches) is said to have started all this off within the genre of electrified music, with the inclusion of drugs and evil, satanic references including a whole song devoted to Satanist Alester Crowley - although The Beatles were the first to include Crowley on the cover of Sgt. Pepper and reference drugs in their music:
Mr. Crowley, what went on in your head? Oh, Mr. Crowley, did you talk to the dead? Your life style to me seemed so tragic With the thrill of it all You fooled all the people with magic Yeah, you waited on Satan's call
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlCpl9whQkg
Christian fundamentalists try to say that the Devil is in all our music and listening to records backwards often shows up secret messages and can influence weaker people into darkness, but I say a lot of metal is pretty dark already played forward without the need for backward masking!!
The band Kiss has been dubbed ‘Kings…’ or ‘Knights In Satan’s Service’ by some Christian circles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLkuP4eRm_M
It Goes Back To The Blues
It was said that Robert Johnson made a deal with the Devil to become famous but the Blues is a form of music born from dark times and has roots in African Voodoo culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uP3WZGUtAbo
Gimmick or Satanic Conspiracy? The rumour of biting Chicken’s heads off during concerts and the Gore Metal blood lusts are obvious gimmicks to sell music but there are bands that really do profess to practice Black Magic rituals, witchcraft and to worship Satan. GG Allin and The Murder Junkies is one Punk band that comes to mind. GG, a self-professed Satanist and heroin addict often strips naked at gigs, shits on the floor and fights the crowd and his lyrics are very demonic.
Warning this is really nasty stuff for Halloween https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMSWRT6ynhs
Conclusion The Devil may well be in your music collection so wash it regularly in Garlic and pray that he doesn’t jump out of the mp3 player this Halloween.