For as long as it’s existed, heavy metal has been singing about the Devil. The self-titled song by Black Sabbath, which opens the Brummies’ first album and pioneered this genre of music, sees Ozzy Osbourne observe in terror, “Satan’s sitting there – he’s smiling.” And since then, from Iron Maiden through Mayhem to Green Lung, the Great Horned One has refused to go away.
It makes sense, of course: metal and the Devil are a match made in Heav...er, Hell. In the Bible, Satan was cast out of paradise for rebelling against God. Similarly, metal has long considered itself to be countercultural, making an obnoxious racket that often comes with anti-establishment lyrics. Within months of singing their first satanic verse, Sabbath were reviled by mainstream music critics and writing the song War Pigs in protest against the Vietnam War.
The Newcastle metal band Venom established themselves as satanic from the off with their 1981 debut single In League With Satan, and their lo-fi production and devilish themes later inspired the black metal genre. Founding guitarist Jeff ‘Mantas’ Dunn tells Hammer that their fixation on the personification of evil was in the name of shock value.
“Anybody in the band who turns around and says, ‘Oh, yes, I’m a card-carrying satanist,’ fuck off!” he says. “Load of bollocks!”
Sabbath weren’t an influence on Dunn, who has a co-writing credit on every song on Venom’s first four albums. Instead, his fascination came from watching horror films with his grandfather when he was a kid.
He remembers: “It was Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr, Boris Karloff – my grandfather loved those sorts of movies, the black-and-white horror movies, so I was allowed to watch them. He used to buy a magazine called Monster Mag, which was an American import.”
Another influential film, which deals directly with Satan and demonic possession, was The Exorcist. “I remember, at 15 years old, I put on my best grown-up clothes and my best grown-up voice, and I managed to see it,” he continues. “The cinema was heaving! It became my favourite film of all time. And, thinking back to writing those early Venom songs, it was never about preaching anything. It’s the cliche: it’s like a horror movie set to music.”
Initially, many metal bands wanted to be the musical equivalent of a good horror flick. Sabbath were named after a 1963 horror film, which starred Boris Karloff and played at a cinema down the road from their first rehearsal space, and wanted to be music’s equivalent of that genre. Iron Maiden’s 1982 satanic anthem, The Number Of The Beast, was inspired by a nightmare bassist/lyricist Steve Harris had after seeing 1978 chiller Damien: The Omen II.
However, these fantasy lyrics were taken by some observers to be signs of true, evil beliefs. After Maiden released their third album, also called The Number Of The Beast, and started touring America to promote it, the satanic themes of their new songs and artworks made them public enemies number one through five stateside. Following such shocking films as The Exorcist and The Omen, as well as the book Michelle Remembers, the country was caught in a ‘satanic panic’.
Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson told me during an interview for The Telegraph last year: “We just viewed it with amusement and bemusement. Primarily, it was a phenomenon of the USA, where they have an underdeveloped sense of irony. We just thought, ‘Well, cool. All of a sudden we’re satanic and controversial? OK, we’ll take it! People wanna buy our records and burn them? Go ahead!’”
Where Sabbath and Maiden publicly stated they weren’t proper satanists, others did more to play into it. Venom owned a Satanic Bible and put a graphic from it on the cover of their 1981 debut album, Welcome To Hell. Three years later, the Swedish proto-black metal band Bathory put a demon-like goat figure on the cover of their self-titled debut album.
Both Venom and Bathory became foundational influences on the 90s Norwegian black metal movement. The scene brought the satanic fantasy into real life when numerous members of the ‘inner circle’, including Mayhem bassist Varg Vikernes and Emperor guitarist Tomas ‘Samoth’ Haugen, burned down local churches. The ringleader, Mayhem founder Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth, claimed to be a theistic satanist.
I asked one of Samoth’s Emperor bandmates, singer/guitarist Vegard ‘Ihsahn’ Tveitan, about the psychology behind the church burnings for an article in The Guardian in 2020. “I think they were an exaggerated expression of authenticity,” he explained. “No one took [us] seriously for dressing up like we did: teenagers in leather and spikes. But, suddenly, it was for real. We were deeply into all of it and, the worse, the better. It became this kind of cult thing; everything that opposes you just strengthens your position.”
Black metal was, arguably, the last great stride in terms of metal’s relationship with Beelzebub. In the late 90s, nu metal took off, focussing on much more social themes. Extreme and traditional metal genres have persisted, however, giving the Devil an immortal presence in the underground. Johanna Sadonis formed the hard rock/heavy metal quintet Lucifer in Berlin in 2014.
“The Devil stands for all things fun, everything that’s forbidden,” the singer tells us. “I would say that the Devil stands for everything that is human and natural, and the church represents the opposite. There are hardcore Christians in the US that are very literal about the bible. That’s the kind of extreme you want to be the furthest away from, if you’re into rock’n’roll and great music.”
It seems that – for as long as metal is loud, scary and speaking out against the mainstream – the Devil will be a welcome figure in its ranks. In fact, as a physical symbol, we couldn’t really ask for better. And with his domineering presence over cinema and broader culture in the 70s and 80s, Satan is becoming more and more like an old friend: a welcome reminder of where metal came from and how it continues to provoke 50-plus years on.
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