Sound of the Beast

by Ian Christe

  Necrophagia, “Death Is Fun” (1985)

  Repulsion, “Horrified (1986)

  Voivod, “Morgoth Invasion” (1984)

  Voor, “Evil Metal” (1984)

  presence in the scene, Abono became responsible for this group of thrill-seeking satanist teenagers who drank like greedy fish and still made it to school in the morning. “We didn’t really do much as far as touring,” recalls guitarist Larry Lalonde, although the group traveled to Europe and Canada. “We recorded the albums on Easter vacation, so I never missed any school.”

  The first Possessed album, Seven Churches, channeled all the destructive madness of these sixteen-year-old American teens upward into a byzantine fest of chaos, speed, and Satanism. Though it was unbelievable that four high-schoolers could craft such masterful madness, Possessed in late 1985 pushed Slayer’s sound so far into evil darkness that it became something new. Vocalist Jeff Becerra recalls the physical strain of performing such frantic music. “It’s fucking aerobics. Seven Churches was the worst album to do on tour. We were in trouble. There were times, playing that stuff in clubs without air-conditioning, when I felt like Muhammad Ali. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know if I was going to vomit or pass out. It was like a jogger’s high.”

  Seven Churches was not the primitive roar of Venom, Bathory, or Hellhammer either—as musicians, the members of Possessed were just as much into guitar wizardry as they were lyrical witchcraft. The battle between technique and raw energy made the record a brilliant, timeless blast—it towered like a spontaneous cathedral, making the fast, violent, hardcore punk records of its day sound like ugly Soviet concrete boxes. Along with Hell Awaits and demo tapes by the Florida band Death, Seven Churches laid the groundwork for what eventually became death metal—the ultimate confluence of black metal’s satanic madness and well-practiced traditional metal musicianship. “Possessed [was] different from all the other bands who were coming out at that time,” Chuck Schuldiner of Death later told Metal Maniacs. “They weren’t pure noise, and they attempted to incorporate a lot of different musical ideas into their songwriting, not just rehash the same thing. They were into progressing as a band, which paved the way for other groups to expand their sound and do different things.”

  The nominal allegiance to the devil stood strong, acting as a marker against mainstream acceptance. To some degree, black-magic-inspired lyrics even led followers into a larger social and moral debate. King Diamond’s fascination with the occult surfaced long before Venom or Slayer in pre—Mercyful Fate bands like Brats and Black Rose. “There’s some meaning behind it,” he says. “Back when we were struggling in Denmark, we had a priest on our case. He was doing the best to ban even our demo tapes from being played on the radio. They set up a two-way thing where we could both talk on the air. He said the obvious things [about Nuns Have No Fun, a mini-album depicting the crucifixion of a nude witch], and I said ‘This is a drawing of the religion you stand for. They did this for real to millions of people!’”

  Call black metal’s dress code and arcane semantics an addictive power fantasy for rejects, but it required a special rarefied sensibility for fans to don shirts depicting giant blazing pentagrams and memorize long lyrical lines of barely audible blasphemy. Constant shout-outs to Satan were distracting and distressing to the unassimilated ear, but, like most youth ideologies, mock devil worship merely expressed the desire to smash societal restraints and carve a space for unfettered fun. Or, in the words of Possessed’s Larry Lalonde, “If you believe in all of this Satan stuff, you have to be stupid!”

  VII

  The PMRC’s Antimetal Panic

  Spring 1985: Tipper Gore and Susan Baker announce formation of Parents’ Music Resource Center (PMRC)

  September 19, 1985: Senate Commerce Committee holds hearings on record labeling

  December 1985: RIAA agrees to voluntary parental-advisory warning stickers

  While Slayer provoked the profane in its underworld, headbangers appeared in public everywhere, milling around strip malls with long, unkempt (and often kempt) hair and sporting T-shirts that bore the frequently frightful names and imagery of bands like Ratt, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, and Venom. America’s authority figures were starting to feel greatly antagonized—there remained a large group of people to whom “deaf leopard” sounded like a bestial atrocity. In the eyes of the older generation, the highly visible and seemingly universal appeal of heavy metal was an invasion of something horribly wrong.

  After MTV brought the rock arena into the home, the entertaining hedonism that Ann Landers feared in the 1970s could no longer be contained solely in concert halls. Rebellion was now a fixture in American living rooms. Credit for the channel’s popularity was shared by acts touting metal madness, like the carnally obsessed Scorpions, the hairy cross-dressers Twisted Sister, and the lipstick satanists Mötley Crüe. Twisted Sister, for instance, was a gang of big, hairy New Yorkers who dressed in exaggerated and ironic female drag. They were led by Dee Snider, a gruesome figure Kerrang! compared to Bette Midler for his garish makeup and long, curling tresses. The band’s immensely popular MTV hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It” depicted the big-city monsters stomping through a suburban neighborhood—a perfect cartoon of how the cable medium itself was snaking through the tidy lawns of the American Midwest.

  A cultural war was brewing, and heavy metal became the punching bag. Even when not explicitly urging a revolt in the streets, the attitudes of heavy metal made a visible threat to public order. Although metal was not the only music to upset moral crusaders, with its obvious taunts the movement served as a fantastic scapegoat. For the same extra-musical reasons that Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast piqued the interest of teenagers, it appalled excitable adults. Soon a veritable bouquet of reactionary forces strung together an unexpectedly successful attack on heavy metal’s social power.

  Anti-AC/DC pamphlet from Germany

  Responding to what some saw as a crisis of extreme music, the Parents’ Music Resource Center political-advocacy group, or PMRC, formed in 1984 at the impetus of Susan Baker, Tipper Gore, and several other wives of ranking members of Congress. The group advanced the theory that rising suicide and rape statistics among teenagers could be blamed on lewd rock lyrics. “They had raised the drinking age,” notes Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, “and there were certain magazines [Playboy and Penthouse] that weren’t being carried by 7-Eleven. There was clearly a conservative grip on things, and the audience was too caught up in partying to react.”

  Though the Washington Wives were often portrayed as a cackling group of middle-aged busybodies, Susan Baker and Tipper Gore were among the most politically effective women in the country in 1984. Both had worked for decades alongside ambitious spouses. Baker’s Republican husband, James, was secretary of the treasury, and later secretary of state. Gore’s husband, Al, a Democratic senator representing Tennessee, sat on the Senate Commerce Committee. He became vice president of the United States in 1992 and famously missed being elected president in 2000 by a quirk in the electoral system. The entire list of PMRC co-chairs included the wives of 10 percent of the Senate—their demeanor was soft, but their influence was frightening.

  The PMRC progressed quickly in Reagan-era Washington. Its wonderfully simple explanation for existing problems cost nothing and blamed a segment of the populace that was not particularly politically active—or even of voting age. Furthermore, to oppose the PMRC worldview, in the eyes of conservatives, was to advocate moral degeneracy of the worst kind. “That’s pretty much the way the PMRC

  PMRC fund-raising letter

  worked,” said James Hetfield of Metallica to journalist K. J. Doughton. “They’d look for bad shit and find it. Because you’re gonna find what you’re looking for, even if it ain’t there to someone else, or ain’t there at all.”

  Less democratic governments had long addressed the threat of rock music with severe sanctions. In 1975 several Black Sabbath songs were banned by the South Korean Federation of Cultur
al Organizations, which pegged the music as “subversive and antiwar.” Korean radio stations, all government owned, ceased playing heavy metal, and longhaired youths were given haircuts on the spot by scissors-wielding policemen. The PMRC and its friends might have welcomed a similar cleansing in America, but such constitutional concepts as freedom of speech required less obvious tactics.

  On September 19, 1985, the Senate Commerce Committee convened hearings at the insistence of Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Gore to advance their belief that record albums should be rated and restricted in the same manner as movies. As Tipper Gore told the mostly Republican panel, “We’re asking the recording industry to voluntarily assist parents who are concerned by placing a warning label on music products inappropriate for younger children due to explicit sexual or violent content.” Meanwhile, religious protesters outside the congressional offices waved placards for the TV cameras reading ROCK MUSIC DESTROYS KIDS and WE’VE HAD ENOUGH.

  This was not an invitation to a dialogue—it was a setup. Still, Twisted Sister was among those targeted for indecency, so the band’s charismatic singer, Dee Snider, went to Washington along with the brainy rocker Frank Zappa and the wholesome singer/songwriter John Denver. “They contacted my management,” Snider says, “and wanted to know if I would come and testify, figuring, ‘Let’s get the most recognizable character in metal at the time and put him up there as the poster boy for censorship.’ They were caught off guard, because they didn’t know I spoke English fluently.”

  To illustrate their outrage, the PMRC presented oversize album covers and recited offensive lyrics, mostly out of context. To stoke the impulses of the press, the organization tabulated a list of the most shocking artists of the day, a haphazard collection including Madonna, Def Leppard, Wendy O. Williams, W.A.S.P., Mötley Crüe, and the Mentors. Most of the artists were chosen for overt sexuality, but there was also particular attention paid to songs dealing with the occult. Most of them had never reached, or were ever intended to reach, such a large mass-media audience. “I guess the worst thing that ever happened to us was kind of good,” notes King Diamond. “The PMRC put Mercyful Fate on their Filthy Fifteen list. I think from us they picked ‘Into the Coven’ or something, but they could have picked any song!”

  Dee Snider responded to questions before the conference committee appropriately dressed in a sleeveless black T-shirt with long frizzled blond hair erupting from his head. Under examination by Senator Gore, Snider suggested that parents, not government, should take responsibility for the music their children bring into the house. When Gore asked Snider if such monitoring was reasonable, the singer quipped, “Being a parent isn’t a reasonable thing, it’s a hard thing. I’m a parent, and I know.”

  After delivering a statement scorning senators for wasting the country’s time, Frank Zappa proposed simply that rock lyrics be printed on the outside of record jackets. Zappa told reporters on Capitol Hill, “You know what worries me about what’s happening here today? This is government as entertainment. These people have plenty to do besides talking about whether or not somebody’s little Johnny gets to see the Blackie Lawless cover with the buzz-saw blade between his legs.”

  “We Are Sexual Perverts”

  Indeed, for shock rockers like Lawless, outraged parishioners were all part of the show. Says Lawless of W.A.S.P.’s first tour of England, “You’ve got the local clergy and all the Catholic Church following us everywhere, buying tickets and bringing people to the shows. They’re bringing a hundred people in at a time, and they’re down in the middle of the room praying while we’re up onstage. It was quite a surrealistic thing.”

  Nonetheless, fear-mongering remained a growth sector during the Reagan administration, as the PMRC hearings empowered a job class of self-proclaimed occult experts—bizarre modern-day witch-hunters who lectured at PTA meetings, encouraged letter-writing campaigns, and wormed their way into TV news segments with alarming regularity. The gravy train extended to a greedy procession of born-again comedians, retired police officers, and evangelical ministers such as Bob Larson, author of a series of books attacking rock music. In the self-published 1983 book Rock, for example, Larson fed the terror of the ignorant with far-fetched warnings concerning Black Sabbath’s supposed use of astral projection and chicken-blood rituals.

  The saber rattling continued following the PMRC hearings, yet King Diamond believes that the Moral Majority learned to intentionally pick weak targets. “If these organizations want to get on your case, they check up on you. If you’re reasonably bright and you can substantiate what you’re saying, they don’t want to pick a fight with you.”

  Yet even the evangelical Christian metal act Stryper was not spared the fervor of the self-righteous. The band voluntarily recalled its 1986 album, To Hell with the Devil, due to controversy over the New Testament—inspired cover artwork. “We got a lot of flak from Christian people who thought we put a pentagram on it just for the sake of putting a pentagram on it,” says Stryper’s singer, Michael Sweet. “One of the angels had ripped a necklace off of Satan’s neck and cast it away, and that’s the pentagram. People just misinterpreted that, so just to avoid controversy and avoid potential problems, we came out with a plain black cover with just the Stryper logo on it.”

  To most musicians the puzzling panic in Washington merely seemed like a collection of irate parents banging on the bedroom door. Ultimately the PMRC inquisitors were not righteous enough and the accused not sufficiently wicked to mandate any government action. “After all was said and done, more was said than done,” says Blackie Lawless. So it appeared, yet the crusade against metalheads was far from over.

  Despite a winning performance in Washington by Dee Snider, the leading recording-industry trade group bowed to PMRC pressure of

  “PORN ROCK”

  This nonexistent genre has the rare distinction of being compiled by legislators, rather than musicians. Some of the bands were sensational pop stars, others, like W.A.S.P., were obscure scum-mongers who might have lived out their careers in relative obscurity without the benefit of this media blitz. The goal was to educate parents, but the outcome was welcome meddling with the sales of heavy metal records. Even the LPs that perished on protest bonfires were paid for. Worst of all, however, the PMRC lent legitimacy to the idea that singing about devils and monsters is a form of witchcraft, a crazy red herring that put metal musicians on the defensive—and sometimes the offensive—for decades.

  Tipper Gore’s Hit Parade—the “Filthy Fifteen”

  Proposed ratings: X—Sexual Content, D/A—Drugs/Alcohol, V—Violence, O—Occult)

  AC/DC, “Let Me Put My Love into You” X

  Black Sabbath, “Trashed D/A

  Cyndi Lauper, “She Bop” X

  Def Leppard, “High’n Dry” D/A

  Judas Priest, “Eat Me Alive” X

  Madonna, “Dress You Up” X

  Mary Jane Girls, “My House” X

  Mercyful Fate, “Into the Coven” 0

  Mötley Crüe, “Bastard” V

  Prince, “Darling Nikki” X

  Sheena Easton, “Sugar Walls” X

  Twisted Sister, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” V

  Vanity, “Strap on Rob by Baby” X

  Venom, “Possessed” 0

  W.A.S.P., “(Animal) F** k Like a Beast” X

  its own accord. While representing the music industry during the PMRC hearings, the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, was also lobbying for the right to collect a tax on blank recording media. In political terms some concession made business sense. “I saw it as a great opportunity to carry the flag for heavy metal,” says Dee Snider of his adventure on Capitol Hill, “figuring everyone would follow me into battle. The other bands laid low, and the audience was apathetic. I was sorely mistaken and very disappointed when I saw the industry cave before we even spoke.”

  In December 1985 the RIAA agreed to voluntarily sticker potentially offensive releases, ultimately leading to implementation of the
standardized black-and-white Parental Advisory Warning labels in 1990. Though supporters argued that such notification did not suppress freedom of expression, superstores like Wal-Mart promptly initiated a litmus test policy, refusing to carry “dirty” records with parental-advisory stickers. Thus began the first marketwide censorship of rock music in America. The RIAA’s controversial decision to sticker was quietly followed by the Audio Home Recording Act in 1992, which enacted a sliding tax on digital recording hardware like DAT players and a 3 percent tax on blank recording media payable to an affiliate of the RIAA.

  Dee Snider’s Teenage Survival Guide,

  published in 1987

  Aside from the Home Recording Act, the Senate was also hotly debating cable regulation in the 1980s, which led to scrutiny of music videos. Dee Snider believes that MTV deep-sixed Twisted Sister’s patently inoffensive “Be Chrool to Your Scuel” clip as a conciliatory gesture to the congressional powers. “The parents thought we were the evil villains,” Snider adds, “but the kids knew we were one of the least offensive bands out there. They were willing to sacrifice our band so they could continue to listen to Mötley Crüe. And the mothers and fathers thought they’d accomplished something.”

  The business of saving America’s children thus complete, the PMRC embarked on increasingly bizarre endeavors during the late 1980s. A few years after the hearings the group established a pay-per-minute telephone hot line that dispersed advice on Satanism and hosted a voice-mail menu of lyrical transgressions organized by specific performers. They also sold cassettes of “clean” music by the composer of The Towering Inferno theme—extremely ironic, considering that the PMRC had vilified Def Leppard for depicting a burning building on its Pyromania album cover.

  Even as heavy metal examined the problems of society, sensation-alistic voices declared loudly that heavy metal itself was the problem. Many legislators were embarrassed by their roles in the PMRC hearings, but the outcome validated a long-running assault against heavy metal. The appearance of the stickers, an apparent admission of guilt, fed a financial boon for groups like the Moral Majority, a coalition of activist religious fundamentalists led by televangelist Jerry Falwell. Lewd rock lyrics became the clarion call of Falwell’s masterful fund-raising operation, scaring up millions of dollars earmarked for political operations such as reversing the legality of abortion, opposing “forced busing,” and replacing the theory of evolution in the schools with biblical creationism.