chapter 12 Satan the Musician: Black Metal and Satanism
The Gothic Milieu
The Gothic milieu, occasionally called the Dark Wave, as a sub-milieu of the 1970s’ New Wave, was largely created by rock music, although fiction, comics, movies, and role-playing games also had a relevant influence. Although the term “Gothic” was created by outsiders, it was quickly accepted by the move- ment. Gothic music should not be confused with Heavy Metal. Metal played on the power of extreme human emotions and feelings. Gothic concentrated on human reactions to particular emotions associated with death, corpses, blood, the macabre, and vampires. The Devil was often mentioned but he was not always a key player in the Gothic scene. Besides, Satan was mentioned in many brands of rock music that were not Gothic. Sympathy for the Devil, a 1968 song by the Rolling Stones where the Devil tells his story in the first person as a “man of wealth and taste” is just one among many examples. Music critic Peter Bebergal argued that occult and Satanic themes in fact revitalized rock music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, offering the Rolling Stones as an example.1 The reverse is also true: music, and other forms of popular culture, somewhat revitalized Satanism.2 The origins of Gothic came from many different sources. Gothic themes emerged in the late 1960s in England and the United States with artists and groups like Alice Cooper (pseud. of Vincent Damon Furnier), Coven, and Black Widow. Almost simultaneously, the most ancient significant references to Satan were introduced to rock music by Coven, an American psychedelic rock band founded in Chicago in 1967, which explicitly sought the patronage of the Church of Satan,3 and Black Widow, a British group in the progressive rock cur- rent that debuted in Leicester in 1970 as the new version of a band active from
1 Peter Bebergal, Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2014, pp. 77–79. 2 See C. Partridge, Eric Christianson (eds.), The Lure of the Dark Side: Satan and Western Demonology in Popular Culture, London: Equinox, 2009; and A. Dyrendal, “Satanism and Popular Music”, ibid., pp. 25–38. 3 See B.H. Olson, “I Am the Black Wizards: Multiplicity, Mysticism and Identity in Black Metal Music and Culture”, m.a. Thesis, Bowling Green (Ohio): Bowling Green State University, 2008, p. 11.
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1966 under the name Pesky Gee. At the end of their first album, Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Soul (1969), Coven included thirteen minutes of a spo- ken word ritual they called a “Satanic Mass”. As Bebergal later commented, it “claimed authenticity but was a mix of popular novels on Satanism, some me- dieval sources, and even some Crowley”.4 Coven may also have been the first band to routinely “throw horns”, i.e. salute its audience with the two-finger sign of the horns,5 although the sign already appeared in The Beatles’ movie Yellow Submarine (1968). Black Widow came into contact with the flamboyant Alex Sanders (1926– 1988), the controversial self-styled “King of the Witches” who started the Alexandrian tradition of Wicca. Sanders even “loaned” his high priestess, and later wife, Maxine Morris, for two Black Widow ritualistic live shows.6 While Christian critics later mentioned the Sanders connection as evidence of Black Widow’s Satanism, in fact in Sanders’ magical system satanic elements were conspicuous only for their absence.7 Although not all these musicians were technically Gothic, fans of Alice Cooper were largely responsible for introduc- ing the Gothic outlook, with its black-leather clothing and silver earrings for males, in many European countries. In 1976, in England, David Letts found- ed The Damned, a band that was originally a punk group, but later moved to Gothic. Letts changed his name to David Vanian (from “Transylvanian”) and focused on the vampire theme. Nazi symbols were also occasionally introduced. In the same year 1976, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Ian Curtis (1957–1980), and Terry Mason, later replaced by Stephen Morris, decided to start a band in Manchester. Originally called Warsaw, it changed its name to Joy Division in 1978 in order not to be confused with a pre-existing London punk group, Warsaw Pakt.8 The name Joy Division came from the line of huts where young deported women were forced to prostitute themselves to German soldiers in Nazi concentration camps. Not- withstanding the name, Joy Division denied any Nazi sympathies, and in fact appeared at the Manchester Rock Against Racism benefit concert in 1978. Joy Division eluded classification, but its haunted and ghostly atmospheres had a
4 P. Bebergal, Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, cit., p. 116. 5 Ibid. 6 The story is told in the Black Widow’s Web site: “Alex Sanders (1926–88) – King of the Witch- es”, available at