Heavy Metal Satanism

So firstly Slayer are lead by a catholic, so people who get promotion of satanism from Slayer clearly are not listening to the band, its like the Jeff Hanneman quote regarding angel of death, he was asked why in the song he wrote he did not condemn Mengele, his response was that if someone needs Jeff to tell them Joseph Mengle was a bad person then its not Slayer that is the issue.

Dave Mustaine is a born again Christian who has renounced as lot of what he used to sing about, fine that is ok for him, but he had no theological training, his opinion of satan is just that, an opinion it means nothing and in that first part of the interview he does not even tie his ideas to music, so pretty irrelevant, so moving on he is asked if Heavy Metal is infused with the devil, he says in some cases meaning it's no different than other groups of people and he offers the observation the his band (heavy metal) pray before they go on stage, presumably to the Christian god, so that his only real example of religious influence in a band so far it his band and it is a Christian influence.

He goes on to the devils tritone, which is a stretch, it was called that because it moves away from the western (and therefore at the time, 17th century, Christian) ideal of music that fits the Christian influenced rules, because it breaks those rules and sounds dissonant comparatively, it was called the devil tritone, but it really no more satanic than eating tomatoes (the devils apple). It may be used frequently in death metal as the narrator says, but firstly there are Christian death metal bands, and secondly is it used in a HUGE variety of modern music, so another stretch here.

Now Mustaine talks about his black magic experience, his "truth" here is coincidence, but he is welcome to his belief, but this does not speak at all to other people on the planet most particularly it says nothing about other bands. More opinions on his idea that satanism was linked to his drinking, but that is a) conjecture and b) far more likely to do with depression and alienation which is likely the source of all of this for Mustaine, not the influence of satan.


So overall this was Dave Mustaine blaming how he feels about his past on Satanism, and making some wild conjecture as to the nature of satanism in music, there is no evidence here, it's just his opinion and frankly not a very well informed one.

Despite what many people think there's no real connection between heavy rock and satanism (except in the case of occult rock which is an irritating noise as far as I'm concerned). I still remember when Iron Maiden were accused of promoting satanism after The Number Of The Beast was released, in fact there was a South American country (can't remember which one) that banned them, but the song came out at a time when dabbling with the occult, ouija boards in particular, was considered fashionable and people found themselves with all sorts of problems and the song was written as a warning not to interfere with things you don't understand.

Used as an excuse for knee jerk reaction. Seriously, suing slayer because they are suppose to have influenced someone into commiting murder, utter nonsense.

I doubt it would influence someone into committing murder.