A "short clip" is not 37 minutes long, Dave. It counts as "feature length" starting at around 40. But I did watch the first few minutes of it, and found that it brought up Marilyn Manson.
Marilyn Manson?!
The shock rocker?!
The person whose
entire schtick and claim to fame is "let me be as shocking and repulsive as humanly possible"? The person who can thank his fame almost exclusively to people like you getting in a tizzy about his music?
The man is an entertainer who realized that what many edgy teenagers really want is something disgusting, something "wrong", something that violates the bounds of acceptable. Is it any coincidence that every element of his "satanism" can simultaneously be portrayed as a publicity stunt? If Christians hadn't thrown up so much free publicity from the pulpit and elsewhere, if they had just ignored him, the man wouldn't be an international superstar. But okay, if anyone on this list legitimately is a satanist, then it would be him.
But overall, I wonder - how can we tell the difference between those influenced by satan, those using these themes because they consider them close to them, and those using these themes just because they see it as part of their art? Hell, Satan, and Christian moralizing are all major issues in pop culture. There are virtually no works of, well,
anything that are as influential as Dante's Inferno or the Bible in western culture. Is it any surprise that such themes are popular within music?
So let's take a band like The Jimi Hendrix Experience. These guys are clearly not "good Christians", as evidenced by songs like "Foxy Lady" or "Voodoo Chile" or "Fire". Hendrix claimed at points to be Christian, and at other points that "Music was my religion". So... Was he a satanist? Did he sell his soul to the devil? Or did he simply promote freedom and oppose oppressive "moral majority" thinking? I don't know. And I get the feeling that neither do you.
Similarly, Led Zeppelin. Now
there's a band you could make a case for. They actually were big fans of Crowley, Jimmy Page having bought his house, and their music making reference to his works and being covered in occult symbols. But were they
satanists? And if they were, did they sell their soul to the devil for fame and fortune? I don't know. And again, I'm fairly certain you don't either. You can
assume, but that doesn't get us anywhere.
Beyond that, the argument just becomes absurd. Apparently all it takes for a band to be satanic is for it to mention Satan, or claim that they are "going to hell" in some off-hand context. The Grateful dead writes about "going to hell in a bucket but at least I'm enjoying the ride" or "a friend of the devil is a friend of mine" and that's somehow evidence that the band is Satanic? No! Jerry Garcia is a professed Christian, and to put it bluntly, if you find that video in any way convincing, you should actually
listen to the songs one time and you'll see that no, that is
not what it is about. The former is about abusive love; the second is a
warning about that kind of lifestyle.
This isn't the only case where either you or sources you cite
completely butcher the meaning of a song. Case in point: "Suicide Solution". Osbourne has claimed that it's a song about the dangers of alcoholism, and this is blatantly obvious from even the most cursory reading of the lyrics. And no, Dave, it wasn't "many" people killing themselves to this. I could find exactly one such case. Maybe because the song
is not about suicide!
Trying to draw a causative link between metal and columbine is more than a little bit ludicrous. There is simply no evidence to support it. That someone who committed an atrocity listened to metal is not evidence that metal influenced them any more than Hitler's vegetarianism is proof that not eating meat causes mass murder. To put it simply: there is no correlation between listening to metal music and committing mass murder. Countless people enjoy heavy metal; countless people do not commit mass murder. Metal music may contain violent themes, but so does TV, movies, and classic literature - there's more bloodshed in MacBeth than your average metal album.
But weren't we talking about Rock and Roll? You have to stretch the definition to the breaking point to make Rammstein, Marilyn Manson, or their ilk qualify as rock and roll.
I should probably work towards a closing statement here at some point.
Dave, in this debate, I thought we were going to be talking about how Rock and Roll poses a tangible threat to society. You even said this in your previous post:
5.a. 'Freedom' is not something to be cherished when its used for bad and harming of others
Well shoot, I thought the whole point of this debate was about this! About rock and roll being used for bad and harming others! But apparently, that's not the debate you meant to have, was it? No, you just wanted to assert with virtually no basis and no way to distinguish between artistic fakery, non-satanic esoteric beliefs, and legitimate demonic possession, that satan is behind rock music.
I expected you to make a case for the dangers of rock and roll, and for how it's a negative influence of society. You... didn't do that. Each time, you spent an
entire week formulating your response, and with three
tiny exceptions, you couldn't come up with anything beyond "
Some rock musicians are satanists" or "
Some rock musicians are bad influences", and you didn't do a particularly good job making
that case either. Look, if you want to make the claim that somehow this music is bad and harmful, then you need to
make that case. Not just assert it with nothing to back it up. Not just generalize from a few isolated cases.
If you want to claim that musicians are possessed by the devil, or have entered deals with the devil, then I expect you to support that claim with more than "they mention hell in their music" and "they said so in a publicity stunt" and quotes from them saying "I feel like I'm possessed on stage". I've been on stage before too, and let me tell you, the feeling is intoxicating. It's easy to feel swept up by the crowd, to feel "possessed" by the energy in the room. This is not evidence of demon possession. This is evidence that adoration can mess with our brains.
Fundamentally, claims like "they're possessed by the devil" or "they're working for the devil" are so vague and ill-evidenced as to be completely useless. I've heard people complain that everything from Harry Potter to He-Man to My Little Pony is "of the devil". Shakespeare could have been possessed by Satan for all we know. So could any number of other artists, including
explicitly Christian ones like the boys from Skillet. There's no criteria for determining it, or for that matter for providing counter-evidence for it.
That's why I ask for secular evidence of the harm of rock and roll. And you've provided none - at least, none that is in the slightest bit convincing. All you've done is made conspiratorial accusations about a handful of artists, and not once have you addressed the bigger picture. You did nothing to counter my claim that you're cherry-picking; instead, you go on to cherry-pick not just individual bands, but individual
lines from entire discographies, often out of context of the song itself, let alone the artist's entire works.
Could
I be possessed by the devil? Is that what happened when I performed "School's Out" at my graduation ceremony? Was that the exhilarating, foreign feeling I had? I have no idea. You have even less of an idea - it could be that it was simply a natural human response, it could be that I misremember the event, or I could even be lying to you to up my "rocker cred" among the people of this forum. What I do know is that most people who listen to and enjoy rock and roll are Christians. Many artists who perform rock and roll are Christians. Christians who apparently disagree with your absurd interpretation of how the devil works. In any case, I will be more careful in the future to define the terms of the debate, as this has been a
huge waste of time.
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Oh, one last thing. Of all the things you're wrong about, this one actually managed to tick me off, and I feel the need to address it. It's mildly off-topic to the debate, but as a metalhead myself, I feel the need to correct some common misconceptions.
3. Its not so much the instruments that are satanic but how they are used with lyrics to get a powerful deceiving message out ; frankly, the guitar 'playing' we find in heavy metal Bands represent total confusion thru an endless conglomeration of sheer undisquishable noise of confusion --- the Guitarist could play most of the chords grossly incorrect yet to the Hearers caught up in the stupor of the moment , it simply wouldn't matter.
Dave, as someone who spent several years trying and failing to learn to play heavy metal guitar, let me be very blunt. You're wrong. You're so wrong that it makes me want to ram my head against a wall. The idea that the chords and tones in Metal are "indistinguishable" or "confused"... Even when talking about some of the most atonal, heavy mainstream material - bands like Behemoth - there is still a clear melodic structure, and if you listen to those songs with an ear for metal, you will
notice if they miss a note. Not just that, either - the music is
incredibly hard to play. If it was just "random chaos" and nobody would notice the musicians failing,
you wouldn't need to be such a virtuouso to play it. Indeed, heavy metal typically contains some of the hardest and most complex guitar playing in
any genre. But I thought we were talking about rock and roll? While I realize some bands blur the line somewhat (Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple), none of them even come close to "noise of confusion". If you can't hear the melodies out of those bands, then you shouldn't be talking about music theory at all.
And you know what? I've heard bands (mostly local high-schoolers) that try to get away with burying the music in the noise, hiding their inability to play well by playing death metal. It
never works. It sounds like crap, and the only people who would enjoy it in the first place are the very same people who can tell how uninspired, simplistic, and
wrong it is.
Not that this has much to do with the debate, it just bugs me when people get metal
this wrong.