Did ‘Satanic Panic’ really lead to demonic actions?
From the minute that Black Sabbath debuted, every parent in the world developed a strained relationship with heavy metal. There might be some truly excellent music to be found under the genre’s large umbrella, but the minute someone starts talking about something that isn’t the most family-friendly subject in the world, it’s only a matter of time before people try to put a negative stamp on it. Then again, it’s not like some of those parents didn’t have some reason to be concerned when their kids started banging their heads to the music.
Since most of the biggest names in the game spent their time singing about things like the occult and Satanic practices, it was only a matter of time before people started to question what their kids were doing behind the scenes. They may have been trying to do right by their kids, but as the 1980s gave way to the ‘Satanic Panic’ era of music, organisations like the Parent Music Resource Centre (PMRC) only made the parents look like the most out-of-touch people on the face of Earth.
Because, from a professional point of view, many of those senators trying to ban certain types of music probably saw this as a slam dunk. For all they knew, the biggest names in music were nothing but a bunch of meatheads looking to make noise. But when everyone from Frank Zappa to Dee Snider went down to Washington, DC with genuinely thought-out points for the jury, you can practically hear the moment when every single middle-aged dad’s sphincter clenched, knowing they were fighting a losing battle.
Does that mean that there weren’t some things to keep in check? Not necessarily. There had already been controversy around people like Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne for “subliminal messages” that caused their fans to kill themselves, but those instances were always the exception to the rule rather than anything any band could have done intentionally. The last thing any group would want to do is limit their fanbase, and when looking back on that generation, every one of those parents was clearly overexaggerating.
Although the music may have seemed taboo at the time, something about the primal rage of the biggest names in metal served as the perfect outlet for kids. Anyone could have easily been consumed by that rage and turned to a life of crime or something even worse, but the minute that they put on anything from The Clash to Metallica, it was easy for them to let out all that energy more naturally.
And looking at the raw data from a study in 2015, researchers from Ohio State, UT Austin, Humboldt State, and UC Riverside concluded that “participation in fringe style cultures may enhance identity development in troubled youth” and that many of those metalheads getting exposed to heavier music were “significantly happier in their youth and better-adjusted” than the previous generation. At the same time, most of the study wasn’t really telling metalheads and the genre heads what they didn’t already know.
When looking back at his youth, Kirk Hammett from Metallica echoed the same sentiments when talking about falling in love with music, saying, “It’s outsider music to the max. Heavy metal solved a lot of my problems when I couldn’t express myself. When I was frustrated, I’d put on a metal album and feel instant relief.”
Clearly, the broad answer to our question is no. So while many concerned parents and delusional evangelicals continue to preach the good word about how the devil lives in people like Ozzy Osbourne or even Tobias Forge these days, heavy metal is far from the demonic force looking to corrupt the youth. If anything, this kind of music could be prescribed to anyone looking for some way to express themselves rather than keeping all of their pain inside, which can actually be detrimental to their well-being.
