Bizarre Cases of Strange and Horrific Deaths, “Satan”, and Heavy Metal Music!

Rightly or wrongly, such concepts as Satan or The Devil have always resonated very nicely with rock music, perhaps particularly with heavy metal music. From bands with such dark names as Black Sabbath, Slayer, or Megadeth, to bands such as Kiss or performers like Alice Cooper, whose stage shows often lean heavily into horror-movie-type imagery, the Devil and Satanism have seemingly gone hand in hand.

Sometimes, though, these lines between entertainment and tragic events in the real world blur significantly – so much so that they often allow for wild accusations and claims to surface. The reasons for this are as varied and complex as they are interesting. While many of the tragic events that we are going to explore here unfolded following the 1980s following the Satanic Panic that gripped much of the United States, the fact is as far back as the start of what we would term “popular music” such connections have been made. Many people were shocked and appalled, for example, at Elvis Presley’s “gyrating hips” back in the 1950s, convinced that his music was the “work of the devil” sent to corrupt the young.

Even before that, if we take ourselves to the American South in the 1930s, we can find the tale of Robert Johnson. While we won’t discuss Johnson’s case in full (not least as it is one with contradictory accounts and differing opinions that could – and have – filled entire volumes), we will briefly explore the legends surrounding his blues rock guitar playing. The basics of the account state that Johnson, who resided in Clarksdale, Mississippi, was an adequate guitarist at best until some point in the mid-1930s (once more, the exact date differs depending on the source). According to legend, one particular evening, at midnight, no less, he made his way to the crossroads at Highway 49 and 61 at the Dockery Plantation, taking his guitar with him. There, he was said to have met and struck a deal with the Devil and would acquire formidable guitar skills in exchange for his soul.

Whatever the truth of the exchange – if indeed any type of exchange did happen – quite literally overnight, Johnson had mastered his instrument and began mesmerizing many with his newly-found guitar skills. Of course, that isn’t the end of the story, as on August 16th, 1938, Johnson was discovered dead in Greenwood, Mississippi, aged only 27 years old. As we might imagine, there were multiple rumors that swirled, at least locally, about his death, with perhaps the one that stuck the most being that he had been purposely poisoned. Whatever the cause of death, many suspected that Johnson had been forced to come good on his deal and the Devil had come to collect his soul.

Indeed, Robert Johnson is also a part of another exclusive, if grim, club that has a connection to what we are discussing here. According to legend, the 27-Club is a loose but growing list of musicians, the vast majority of whom have achieved quite exceptional fame in their respective genres of music, all of whom have died at the age of 27, quite often in relatively suspicious circumstances. Interestingly, a particular group of high-profile rock ‘n’ roll deaths between 1969 and 1971 – right around the time when the wider world was learning of the legends of Robert Johnson – are largely agreed to have given rise to the now infamous 27-Club.

The first of these high-profile musicians was guitarist Brian Jones, perhaps (now) the little-known founder and leader of The Rolling Stones. Jones’ role in the band, however, was quickly marginalized and overshadowed by the songwriting partnership of frontman, Mick Jagger, and fellow guitarist, Keith Richards. Jones increasingly filled his time with drugs and alcohol, with a particular liking for cocaine. By June 1969, he was essentially fired from the group he had created and replaced by guitarist Mick Taylor. Only weeks later, on July 3rd, 1969, Jones was found dead in his swimming pool, the victim of accidental drowning.

Just over a year later, on September 18th, 1970, American guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, was discovered dead in his London flat. His death was ruled accidental, the result of a deadly mixture of drugs and alcohol. However, perhaps in part because he was also 27 years old, rumors of inconsistencies surrounding his death began to swirl.

Only 16 days later, on the other side of the Atlantic on October 4th, 1970, 27-year-old singer, Janis Joplin, was found dead on the floor beside her bed in a Hollywood motel room in California. On the day of her death, she was due to record with producer, Phil Rothchild. However, when she failed to show up for the session, Rothchild sent tour manager, John Cooke, to her motel to “look in” on the solo artist. Ultimately, it was Cooke who discovered the singer’s body. Officially, her death was recorded as a suspected heroin overdose, with excessive alcohol intake also likely contributing to her demise. Interestingly or not, Cooke later stated that he was aware of other heroin users who had purchased their supplies from the same dealer as Joplin, who had also overdosed, leading him to suspect that a particularly strong and potentially lethal batch of heroin was “going around” Hollywood at the time.

Just short of a year later, and exactly two years to the day since Brian Jones’ sudden death, on July 3rd, 1971, in Paris, France, the controversial frontman of The Doors, Jim Morrison, was discovered dead in his bathtub in his apartment. What made Morrison’s death stand out, at least to some, was that no autopsy was performed, with the official cause of death ruled as heart failure (although many suspected he had suffered a drug overdose).

While these four deaths almost certainly sparked the 27-Club conspiracies, many more baffling untimely demises of 27-year-old musicians continued over the decades. For example, on May 3rd, 1972, Stone The Crows guitarist, Leslie Harvey, was electrocuted and died at his home. Less than a year later, on March 8th, 1973, Ron McKernan, the founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed away from internal bleeding. Just over two years after that, on April 24th, 1975, the keyboardist and guitarist with Badfinger hanged himself so ending his own life, while just over six months later, on December 8th, 1975, the bassist from rock band, Uriah Heap, Gary Thain, died from a heroin overdose.

As the seventies gave way to the 1980s, these sudden deaths began to become few and far between, although they still happened. On March 23rd, 1980, for example, the lead singer of the reggae band, Inner Circle, was killed in a car crash. Just short of eight years later, on February 17th, 1988, one of the most influential people in Soviet music, Alexander Bashlachev, allegedly took his own life by throwing himself out of his ninth-floor apartment window. Five years after that, on July 7th, 1993, the lead singer of the punk rock band, The Gits, was murdered in downtown Seattle.

As brutal as some of these deaths of 27-year-old musicians were, it was the death of another Seattle musician that really sparked a resurgence of interest in the 27-Club conspiracies. On April 8th, 1994, the body of Nirvana vocalist and guitarist, Kurt Cobain, was found in the garage above an outbuilding at his Seattle home. He had, it appeared, shot himself in the head (there are, however, several conspiracies surrounding Cobain’s death that we won’t get into here).

Interestingly or not, just two months after Cobain’s death, on June 20th, 1994, the bass player in his wife, Courtney Love’s band (Hole), Kristen Pfaff, was discovered dead in her bathtub of a drug overdose. According to those close to her, she was planning on “leaving town” that day. Less than a year later, on February 1st, 1995, in the United Kingdom, the main songwriter and guitarist with the Manic Street Preachers, Richie James, simply disappeared off the face of the planet. His whereabouts remain unknown.

More recently, also in the United Kingdom on July 23rd, 2011, pop singer, Amy Winehouse, was found dead in her London flat, seemingly from alcohol poisoning. What makes Winehouse’s death particularly interesting is that she had expressed to several close friends of her genuine fear of dying at age 27.

Did each person in the 27-Club really make a deal with the Devil for fortune and fame? And if so, why aged 27? As we might imagine, there are various theories that have been put forward over the years. Some people have offered that there are 27 books in the New Testament, while others highlight that there are 27 generations between David and Jesus. Others still point out that it was at the age of 27 when Jesus “preluded to evangelization!”

Perhaps one of the most intriguing claims is that 27, according to some, is the number of death. According to some, the number of the beast – 666 – should be turned upside down (as the cross is reversed in Satanism), which then gives the number 999, whose digits added together equals 27. Whatever the reasons might be, as author Charles R. Cross offered, “the number of musicians who died at 27 is truly remarkable”, and while there is likely nothing but coincidence behind these strange deaths, the “statistical spike for musicians who die at 27” can’t be simply dismissed unreservedly.

As intriguing as the 27-Club conspiracies are, connections between strange deaths and music, particularly heavy metal or rock music, go much deeper. As we mentioned earlier, claims of rock music being the work of the Devil go back to the start of popular music (at least) and the times of Elvis Presley. However, during the mid-to-late 1970s and certainly during the eighties, these claims and accusations began building to a fever pitch.

In the book Season of the Witch, author, Peter Bebergal, describes this era as the “beginning of a cultural war” where the Devil was a representation of “youthful and artistic rebellion”, while also being used as a “symbol for what was seen as the decadence and corruption of youthful minds”. Indeed, Berbergal went on to highlight how the United States was in the grip of a Satanic panic, with the public’s fear shifting from “’communists everywhere’ to a cabal of secret Satan worshippers”. Furthermore, these Devil worshippers were (seen to be) hiding in plain sight, perhaps as “your children’s teachers, the friendly postman, or your next-door neighbor”. Ultimately, during this time, “the long-haired kid with the Venom t-shirt” was as much of a suspect as any suspected communist ever had been.

Berbergal also went on to point out how it wasn’t just members of society who held such suspicions and beliefs but members of the police departments around the country. He stated that in court documents involving troubled teenagers, the police would “always make a note that they (teenagers) listened to heavy metal”, elaborating that there was a genuine belief that listening to heavy metal music made teenagers “more susceptible to whatever Satanic conspiracy” was out there.

Perhaps one of the first heavy metal bands to really feel the wrath of the American public who believed Satan himself was spreading his influence through rock music was British rockers, Iron Maiden. When they released their 1982 album The Number of the Beast and subsequently embarked on a tour in support of it, they faced public rallies where copies of the album were piled up and burnt in the streets. The group’s long-term manager witnessed such debacles, and offered several years later that upon burning the records, the protesters “all got scared of the smoke or the fumes so they ran away! The next time, they simply used hammers to break the records!”

Arguably one of the most famous heavy metal artists to be accused of not only believing in Satanism but of actively spreading its (perceived) deadly influence was the former Black Sabbath frontman, Ozzy Osbourne, who would find himself in a California courtroom in 1986 following the death of a fan who, it was alleged, was influenced by secret messages in the Osbourne song, Suicide Solution (from the album Blizzard of Ozz) causing him to shoot himself dead.

The lawsuit had officially been filed on November 1st, 1985, by the parents of 19-year-old John Daniel McCollum, who, on October 27th, 1984, after allegedly listening repeatedly to the song in question, had shot himself in the head. The suit alleged that the song contained a hidden message that said, “Get the gun! Shoot!” and that Osbourne, as well as his record company, CBS Records, had been irresponsible in releasing a song that “could promote suicide”.

Ultimately, the case was dismissed, with the judge, John L. Cole, offering that the suit “reads more like a novel than a legal pleading”, elaborating that they would “have to look very closely at the First Amendment and the chilling effect that would be had if these words were held to be accountable!” He continued that “reasonable persons understand musical lyrics and poetic conventions as the figurative expressions which they are”. It should also be noted that McCollum was struggling with his mental health at the time of his death and that he had known struggles with alcohol. With this in mind, the attorney for CBS, William Vaughn offered that had such a case gone in the plaintiff’s favor, it would mean that “every writer (would then) have to write to the lowest common denominator so as not to disturb even the most susceptible of us”.

For his part, Ozzy Osbourne, when addressing whether he had put messages encouraging suicide into his songs, offered, perhaps bluntly, “What artist wants their audience dead?”

Several years later, in 1990, another British heavy metal act, Judas Priest, who was also on CBS Records, would find themselves in an almost identical predicament. The case related to an incident that had occurred on the evening of December 23rd, 1985, in Reno, Nevada. On the night in question, 20-year-old James Vance and 18-year-old Ray Belknap had consumed a large amount of alcohol and were listening to the Judas Priest song, Better By You, Better Than Me, a cover of the 1969 song by Spooky Tooth on their 1978 release Stained Class. Ultimately, at some point during the evening, Belknap placed a 12-gauge shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. He died instantly. Vance then picked up the gun and did the same. He, however, survived the self-inflicted blast, although he was left severely disfigured.

As investigations into the suicide and attempted suicide progressed, Vance told attorneys that he and Belknap had been listening to the Judas Priest song when “all of a sudden we got a suicide message, and we got tired of life”. He would even state in a letter to Belknap’s mother that it was his belief that a combination of “alcohol and heavy metal music” had caused them to be “mesmerized!” It was later asserted that a subliminal message had been inserted into the song stating, “Do it!” repeatedly, and that it was this phrase that had been the trigger for the young men’s tragic actions.

The case was dismissed for similar reasons to the Osbourne trial four years earlier. Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford offered similar sentiments to Osbourne following the trial, stating that if the band were ever to put subliminal messages in their songs, they would tell their fans to “buy more of our records” rather than kill themselves.

Vance, incidentally, passed away three years after the incident, before the case came to trial, in December 1988, after falling into a coma from a suspected drug overdose. He had also been dealing with depression in the years before his death.

Half a decade later, an even more harrowing death with an alleged connection to heavy metal music occurred. On the evening of July 22nd, 1995, in Arroyo Grande, California, 15-year-old Elyse Marie Pahler was lured to a remote location by three teenagers – 17-yer-old Royce Casey,16-year-old Jacob Delashmutt, and 15-year-old Joseph Fiorella – where they then tortured and murdered her.  Elyse was missing for eight months before Casey finally confessed to the trio’s crimes in March 1996 – in part due to his belief that Delashmutt and Fiorella were planning to kill him - and led authorities to the location of her body.

It would come to light through Casey’s confession that the three boys were a band – named, Hatred – and that they had killed her as they believed her ritual murder would “enhance their music”, with Casey elaborating in court that the reason was to “receive power from the Devil to help them play guitar better!” It also came to light that the trio were heavily influenced by the thrash metal band, Slayer, with Fiorella in particular having an intense fascination with their lyrics, studying them “as if they held deep meaning”. It would also come to light that it was Fiorella who had specifically selected Elyse as their victim as he was “obsessed with killing her”.

According to the details of the murder trial, the three boys had lured her to a Nipomo Mesa eucalyptus grove under the pretense of smoking cannabis together. Once there, however, the trio set upon her. Delashmutt began strangling the young girl with his belt before Fiorella stabbed her several times with a large hunting knife. Casey then took control of the knife and stabbed Elyse several more times. Autopsy reports showed that none of these injuries themselves would have been immediately fatal, so leading them to conclude that she would have been alive and in horrific pain following the attack. Further details revealed that in her final minutes, with the three killers watching her, Elyse prayed to God for help.

Even worse, there was evidence to suggest that at least one of the killers had sexually assaulted Elyse in the hours following her death, although this was not proven in court. As these details entered the public domain, allegations began to swirl. Fiorella’s mother, for example, claimed to the police that, according to what her son had confided in her, Delashmutt and Casey had sexually assaulted Elyse’s body, while friends of Delashmutt informed police that it was he who had returned to the body alone and carried out the act of necrophilia.

Throughout 1997, each of the accused entered into guilty pleas. Fiorella was sentenced to 26 years to life in March of that year, while six months later, in September 1997, Casey was sentenced to 25 years to life. The following month, Delashmutt, after entering into a similar guilty plea, also received 26 years to life for his part in the killing.

The previous year, in November 1996, Elyse’s parents filed a lawsuit against Slayer. They claimed that the band’s lyrics had, ultimately, influenced and incited the three boys’ actions. They asserted that two of the group’s songs, specifically – Postmortem and Dead Skin Mask – had encouraged the trio to “stalk, rape, torture, murder, and commit acts of necrophilia”. It would take four years for the case to come to trial following several delays.

Ultimately, the case against the band was dismissed, with the judge offering that there was “no legal position” to find the band guilty of such charges, adding that the public “might as well start looking through the library at every book on the shelf” for similar charges. A second lawsuit was brought which was also dismissed for similar reasons. At the time of writing, Casey, Fiorella, and Delashmutt remain incarcerated.

Perhaps one of the most harrowing cases of bizarre connections between deaths and heavy metal music occurred in West Memphis, Arkansas, in the mid-1990s, not least as it resulted in what is widely regarded as a complete miscarriage of justice. The murders in question occurred in May 1993. On the evening of May 5th of that year, Steve Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers – all eight years old – were reported missing. According to neighbors near Byers’ home, the three boys were seen at around 6:30 pm. The police and members of the community each undertook searches of the area that night but nothing of consequence was found. The following morning, at 8 am, a more thorough search of the area by Crittenden County Search and Rescue units got underway in the Robin Hood Hills area. However, it was a juvenile Parole Officer, Steve Jones, who made the discovery.

At a little before 2 pm that day, Jones spotted a shoe floating on the waters around the Robin Hood Hills. A search of the waters resulted in the discovery of the three missing boys. Each was found in the same grim conditions, each naked with their wrists tied to their ankles behind their backs with their shoelaces. The boys’ clothing was later found a short distance away, some of which had been wrapped tightly around sticks that had been pushed into the ground, seemingly as a marker of sorts. Later autopsies offered that the boys had died from “multiple injuries” and drowning.  

The following day on May 7th, 18-year-old Damien W. Echols was interviewed by police. Echols was relatively well-known in the small-town environment of West Memphis, not least due to his liking of heavy metal music and horror films, his preference for wearing mostly black, and his apparent interest in Wicca – a combination of paganism and witchcraft.  Perhaps a good indicator of how many in the small-town community viewed Echols was the words that his high school teacher, Jim Ferguson, offered to the New York Times at the time of his arrest that he was “like some wacko cult member”.

It was during Echols’ interview that seemingly inadvertently gave investigators further reason to believe he was indeed the murderer, or at least that he could be charged as such, following his responses to what he himself thought had happened to the boys and why. He offered that one of the boys was likely mutilated more than the others (they were – Byers had suffered mutilation of his genitals) and that the killings could have been carried out “to scare someone”. At the time he gave this statement, the mutilation of Byers had not been made public. Had it been a lucky guess on Echols’ part? Most likely, yes. For investigators, however, Echols was their number one suspect.

They quickly arrested his friend, 16-year-old Jason Baldwin, and not long after that, 17-year-old Jessie Misskelley Jr. And it was Misskelley’s testimony when he was questioned that sealed the fate of the three young men, leading to their arrest and them being charged with murder. He was held for over 12 hours without his parents being present, during which time, he waived his right to a lawyer. He ultimately confessed to the murders, which, he further claimed, also involved Echols and Baldwin.

For their parts, both Echols and Baldwin stated that they hardly knew Misskelley – who, like Echols was a “high school dropout”  - with Echols stating years later that rather than being a friend he was “on the fringes of mine and Jason’s life!” However, as the arrests and subsequent cases were reported, the Arkansas Times newspaper began to point out the outlandish nature of the apparent confession, as well as dramatic factual inconsistencies. For example, although there was no suggestion of such at the location the boys’ bodies were recovered, Misskelley claimed that the trio had engaged in Satanic rituals that often involved orgies, initiation rites, and, of course, murder.

It would later come to light that Misskelley had an I.Q. of around 70 and was seemingly scared of the police officers. Ultimately, he offered the confession from the point of a witness (to Echols and Baldwin’s actions) and added details such as Satanic rituals as he believed, in his own mind, that he was assisting the police by doing so. Misskelley took back his confession, but it was still used as evidence in the trial against him. Ultimately, in February 1994, he was found guilty of one count of first-degree murder and two counts and second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

The following month, the trial of Echols and Baldwin began. Each was also charged with the murders of the three boys, murders committed, it was argued, as part of a Satanic ritual driven by the boys liking for heavy metal music. Both were found guilty on all three counts. Baldwin was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Echols, however, was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Fortunately, as we shall see, this death sentence was not carried out.

Their case drew the attention of many members of the public, including many rock and heavy metal musicians, not least because of the highly circumstantial evidence against them, as well as the initial confession by Misskelley that was beyond suspect. As the campaigns went on, by the end of the 2000s, further evidence and testimony made the already shaky conviction even more unsafe. Eventually, a decade and a half after they were convicted of the alleged Satanic murder, the three men were allowed to enter into Alford plea deals.

These deals, essentially, allowed the three men to maintain their innocence of the charges, but also acknowledged, at least officially, that the prosecution had enough evidence to convict them. Ultimately, this deal, in the eyes of the court, is still a guilty plea, and so ensured that authorities can’t be sued for wrongful prosecution or conviction. Jason Baldwin, incidentally, stated to the Associated Press that these plea deals were “not justice, how ever you look at it”, elaborating that he didn’t want to enter into the deal but did so in order to ensure that his friend, Echols, would be safe from Death Row.

The three men were released to much celebration from those who had supported them. It should also be noted, though, that many people were still certain of their guilt, as well as their apparent interest in practicing Satanic sacrifice. Assuming the “West Memphis Three” are innocent of the murders (and they almost certainly are), the actual perpetrators remain at large.

Without a doubt, some of the most brutal connections between horrendous deaths and heavy metal music occurred during the “second wave” of the Norwegian black metal scene in the early 1990s. While the initial wave of black metal in Norway began in the early 1980s, with references to Satan and Satanism in their respective lyrics more for shock than anything else, the second wave, which began along with the new decade, was much more extreme, both in content and in many of the individual musician’s behavior, which often spilled over to their fans.  

One of the most popular bands during this time, and certainly leaders of the scene, was the black metal band, Mayhem. And it was around Mayhem that some of the most controversial events unfolded.         

Mayhem formed in the early 1980s, but it wasn’t until the end of the decade with the arrival of a new vocalist, Per Yngve Ohlin – better known in the black metal community by his stage name, Dead. And it was with Dead’s arrival that Mayhem’s already huge presence within the black metal community became close to infamous. Dead would wear corpse paint on stage in order to give the appearance of being dead, even, on some occasions, burying his stage clothes on the day of a performance before digging them back up before the show to further give the appearance that he had literally risen out of the ground.  

However, despite the theatrics, there was a genuine dark underside to Dead’s existence. He was an extremely introverted person, and his bandmates quickly noticed that he was seemingly prone to bouts of depression, even self-harming regularly on stage. By the early 1990s, the band had moved into an isolated house in the woods just outside of Oslo, where they lived and rehearsed. It was here where things took a truly tragic turn.

On April 8th, 1991, Dead was discovered dead in a room of the house by his bandmate Oystein Aarseth – better known by his stage name, Euronymous. As well as slitting his wrists he had also slit his throat. When these wounds failed to kill him, Dead had seemingly taken a gun and shot himself in the head. Upon discovering the body, Euronymous rushed out of the house in order to purchase a disposal camera before returning and photographing the body. These actions, and subsequent ones in the months and years that followed, would spark his own slow-burning tragedy, which we will turn to shorty.    

Many people in the Norwegian black metal scene were critical of Euronymous, with several accusing him of using Dead’s death to further his band’s image as the most extreme. In fact, some even suggested that Euronymous had indirectly encouraged Dead to take his own life. Not only did Euronymous have a habit of antagonizing Dead (although it should be noted that Dead equally disliked Euronymous), it was alleged by some that he had purposely left Dead alone in the house on the day he took his own life in the hope that he would do so (it was clear to the band that Dead was in an increased depressed state). Incidentally, one of the photographs taken by Euronymous was used as the cover artwork for a bootleg live album of the band – Dawn of the Black Hearts - several years later.

In the years following the Dead’s death, Euronymous was undoubtedly one of the most controversial figures in the Norwegian black metal scene and a person of significant interest to the authorities, who had begun to undertake an active investigation into the scene, specifically due to several cases of arson at churches. As such, for as many people who followed Euronymous and his ideas, there were equally as many who would find themselves in conflict with him. One of these people was fellow black metal musician, Kristian Vikernes (who was also known as Varg Vikernes).

Vikernes had joined Mayhem in 1992 in order to record the bass parts of the band’s long-awaited debut album (replacing Jorn Stubberud, who had left the band due to the actions of Euronymous following Dead’s death). However, for a variety of reasons, as 1993 progressed, the pair were increasingly at odds with each other. On the evening of August 10th, 1993, these disagreements came to a head.

Vikernes, along with another man, Snorre Ruch, drove from Bergen to Euronymous’ apartment in Oslo. Although the details are conflicting, a confrontation ensued and Euronymous was stabbed to death. For his part, Vikernes stated he had gone to Oslo to cut ties with Euronymous but he had attacked him causing him to act in self-defense. He stated that he suspected that Eronymous had planned to incapacitate him before torturing and killing him. Whatever the truth of the events that night, Vikernes was swiftly arrested and sentenced to 21 years in prison.

Ultimately, these events eventually led to the breaking up of the Norwegian black metal scene, at least in the shape it existed in the early 1990s. The scene, though, is one of the most interesting in music history for a wide variety of reasons, and there have been multiple documentaries made and books written about it.

As we can see, then, there have been multiple connections between the apparent powers of darkness and rock and metal music. And while these are often misplaced, some, such as the events that unfolded around the Norwegian black metal scene are all too real – and fatal. We might ask, though, why is heavy metal music and the forces of evil such a good match?

If we take the band that, arguably, lit the touch paper of what would be referred to as heavy metal, Black Sabbath. Initially called Earth, the band originally had a more up-tempo blues sound. However, one particular day, lead singer Ozzy Osbourne noticed people queuing outside a cinema to see the movie Black Sabbath. He immediately thought how “weird” it was that “people would pay good money to be scared!” The band changed their name and immediately adopted a much darker, heavier sound – one that was more befitting of a horror movie. From that day, then, it would appear that there was an automatic connection between the powers of darkness and heavy metal music.

By the time the seventies had passed the baton of time to the 1980s, and with large sections of American society being in the grips of a “Satanic Panic”, this connection was suddenly viewed as very real. And we should also note how many bands of this era were more than happy to embrace connections to the Devil and the powers of darkness for their respective images. Much the same can be said for the scene in Norway in the early-to-mid 1990s, with many of the black metal actively courting connections to Satanism, or perhaps more accurately, anything anti-Christian. Only following the deaths we explored earlier did the scene begin to distance itself from active participation and align itself with entertainment.

Could there be, though, any truth in the notion that “The Devil” himself – whoever he might be and if he does exist - is looking to spread his influence through music, specifically heavy metal music? Common sense tells us such claims are a reach at best. After all, we would have to look at multiple genres of film, literature, and art through a similar lens. With that said, however, you just never know, right?