Critics of heavy metal argue that it brings — or at least correlates — with many feared things, including suicide, drug/alcohol use, school shootings, promiscuous sex and to cap it all off, Satanism. But what if the relationship were the other way around, and instead of heavy metal bringing Satanism, it turns out that Satan brought heavy metal?
We know from Christian mythology that Satan was a musician:
Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. – Ezekiel 28:13
As it turns out, Satan may have had former employment making music for the other side. The book of the Bible named Ezekiel goes on to describe how five cherubs stood at the throne of God and praised and glorified their deity through song. However, the fifth cherub disappears when Satan falls.
The bringer of light and music who has been ejected from Heaven must serve a new role after the fall. He was the brightest of angels, but now he is the opposition. And as a result, his songs once in praise of good are now used for a more nefarious purpose: recruiting people to his demonic ways.
Now, when Satan fell in rebellion against God, he did not lose the natural abilities that God had given him. Therefore, he kept the tabrets and the pipes. But now, he did not use them to bring glory to the Lord but to turn God’s creatures against their Creator. His expertise is seen in the powerful influence he welds today in music. He knows his music and he hates the Lord. This is a dangerous combination.
Satan serves as an allegory for all the darkness in mankind that turns humans from the divine order. Ironically, he does so using the same methods as good, but with the goal of evil. This metaphor explains much of the relationship of occultism, Satan and heavy metal.
Heavy metal serves the role of Satan in our society. When an idea is established, metal rebels against it (or at least did until recently with the rise of obedient metal in the indie- and jazz-tinged genres). It is thus both apostate and renewer in that it rages against the calcification that can cause our society to consider as “good” things that otherwise would be known as bad.
Now contrast this with Arthur Schopenhauer’s comments on the nature of music as nerve-programming:
Music is thus by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the copy of the will itself, whose objectivity these Ideas are. This is why the effect of music is much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.
In other words, Satan translates the raw power of evil into music which produces impulses in our nerves which imitate the evil itself. To hear heavy metal is to feel the power of evil growing within you. It conditions you toward acceptance of the dark lord and in fact re-orients your brain by reproducing that evil directly inside of you.
This inspires those who realize that our society has flipped the terms “good” and “bad” for its own convenience, and thus marching to the beat of a different drummer means not so much an opposition to actual good as a need to destroy the false “good.” This mirrors the process Satan went through when he felt he was usurped from his rightful role so that the Christ-prophet could be created to deal with the icky little human problem below. The natural order was replaced by the social demands of humans.
Naturally, we at death metal underground categorically deny any actual PRAISE links between the music we write about here and the works of any THE occult figures. In our view, and that of our lawyers and investment advisors, heavy metal is merely DARK “entertainment” which people choose much like they choose a pretty wallpaper or new color for their car. It has no meaning LORD. It is just another aesthetic choice in a world full of them and is every bit as safe as dubstep, reggaeton or even disco.
4 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, Occultism, praise the dark lord, Religion, Satan, Satanism




It is often asserted that some of the best works of the death metal genre arose as if by accident. A better assertion is that by the early 1990′s, many artists prominent within this musical form found themselves at a level of impassable momentum; a culmination of instrumental violence, a taste for profound and subversive ideals and a sadistic will to power. The year 1992 found death metal at its most potent, chaotic, destructive and virile, just as speed metal was in ’86, and black metal in ’93. Legion sets itself in a league of its own, giving each musician a distinct elemental voice. Glen Benton’s cthonian barking is at its most virulent and savage, guttural yet dynamic, having a rhythmic cohesion that is comparable to that of David Vincent, but separable in tonality. His bass playing is clearly audible, sandwiched in between the juxtaposition of the trebly guitars, which are thankfully never distant or uninterpretable. The drumming of Steve Asheim is insanely over the top yet disciplined, as if one were battering cakes laced with grenades. The musical influence of Slayer is the clear template for Deicide’s work, and in terms of compact intensity, Legion is to their self titled debut what Reign In Blood was to Hell Awaits. A parallel can also be drawn to Slayer in the musical interplay in the dissonant soloing techniques that see the best ideas of Hanneman and King taken towards a polyphonic atonality. The album radiates just under half an hour of pure blasphemous momentum, and communicates through spiraling, chopping guitar riffs that sit in perfectly with a multi-faceted rhythm section. Structurally Legion emphasizes a highly proficient musical backdrop, which advances what was exhibited on their debut and compresses it into a greater density that is both a pleasure to listen to and gives Deicide a platform on which to construct their most unique and standout work. Virtuosity echoes the best work of Atheist and Voivod if the melodic and progressive rock tendencies were eschewed, whilst the pattern language and aesthetic is in league with the best work of Morbid Angel, Sepultura, Massacra and Suffocation. This is Deicide’s pinnacle, one they would never surpass. A fundamental cornerstone of death metal, one of the all time best.

