Hoyt Curtin, Joseph Barbera and William Hanna – ‘Meet the Flintstones’

In 1999, London’s Brixton, Brick Lane, and Soho areas were all targeted by Neo-Nazi fascist David Copeland in a racist and homophobic bombing campaign – the duffel bag explosive containing up to 1,500 nails planted in the Admiral Duncan LGBTQ+ bar claimed three lives. With a membership history in far-right parties, the British National Party and later the smaller but even more extreme National Socialist Movement, Copeland was committed to his fantasy of a UK race war; two giant swastika flags were discovered hanging from his bedroom wall when he was arrested in Hampshire.

The extent of his mental health issues is still up for debate, but psychiatric consensus did conclude that he had some fraying psychological deficits and was deemed to suffer paranoid schizophrenia and diagnosed with a personality disorder by professionals at Broadmoor Hospital. Alongside his sadistic dreams as an SS officer controlling women as slaves, The Flintstones‘ TV theme, sung by his parents, etched into his psyche with its refrain “we’ll have a gay old time” triggered a fear he may be a homosexual as a teenager, the innocuous ’61 jingle interpreted to be actively instilling a message regarding his developing sexuality, according to conversations with journalist Nick Ryan. Insecure agony plucked from a cartoon TV show is a stark illustration of how distorted beyond recognition one’s art can be once out in the ether.

KMFDM – ‘Stray Bullet’

It has become a byword for the dreadful modern phenomena that continue to plague America. On April 20th, 1999, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered Columbine High School armed with semi-automatic pistols, shotguns, and homemade explosives, killing 13 before turning the guns on themselves. Even with the wave of school shootings that followed—including the 2024 Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia—the conservative right and the National Rifle Association, bolstered by relentless lobbying efforts, refuse to budge on even the most moderate legislative measures to address the country’s deadly gun epidemic. The lives of children, it seems, are a price worth paying so a select few can cling to their guns.

While shock rocker Marilyn Manson received the most heat from an outraged media and zealous Christian right, there was little evidence that Harris and Klebold were fans. It was the German industrial group KMFDM that Harris loved, posting the lyrics to ‘Stray Bullet’ on his website not long before the massacre. Wishing to quash any further misread of their values, frontman Sascha Konietzko issued a statement expressing their sympathies with the victims’ families and reiterating the band’s steadfast principles opposing war, fascism, and violence against others.

New Order – ‘True Faith’

In May 2012, Chinese computer engineering student Jun Lin was tragically murdered in a horrifically predatory case that shocked Canada and the world. Lured to an apartment in Montréal’s Décarie Boulevard through a promise of a sexual encounter via hookup site Craigslist, Luka Magnotta filmed himself killing and dismembering Jun, uploading the video to a notorious shock site under the title 1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick. Various limbs and body parts were mailed to Vancouver schools and the respective headquarters of the country’s Conservative and Liberal parties, the latter intercepted before arrival.

Throughout his horrific clip, New Order’s 1987 hit ‘True Faith’ plays in the background. There’s been much speculation as to why that one song was chosen, if not incidental. Some have theorised its selection could be from its usage in the American Psycho soundtrack; psychiatrist Marie-Frédérique Allard reports that Magnotta heard it in a “sitcom” but never divulged which. ‘True Faith’ became the feature of another grisly clip, as Scarlet Blake’s filmed killing of a cat, inspired by Magnotta’s internet history of animal cruelty, was carried out with ‘True Faith’ in the background, a warped nod to her hero.

AC/DC – ‘Night Prowler’

Los Angeles was struck with fear in the mid-1980s, when serial killer and sex offender Richard Ramirez, dubbed the ‘Night Prowler’ by the press, murdered at least 14 people in the greater metropolitan counties and even San Francisco’s Bay Area. Striking terror in the region across the fourteen months he was at large, it was revealed during his eventual trial that Ramirez held a fascination with the occult, flashing a pentagram in court and shouting “Heil Satan!” during the proceedings.

He was also a big AC/DC fan, with the LAPD claiming he wore their band T-shirt during his spree and leaving an official merch hat at one of the crime scenes. People who knew Ramirez claimed that his favourite song of theirs was ‘Night Prowler’ from ’79’s Highway to Hell, wrongly interpreting its lyrical ode to sneaking in one’s girlfriend’s room as her parents sleep upstairs as breaking and entering in the pursuit of murder. This hideous lyrical inference dropped the band in dire publicity, and their gigs were protested by ‘concerned parents’ in the area.

The Beatles – ‘Helter Skelter’

It’s near-impossible to chronicle the dark storm clouds that bookend the 1960s’ tumultuous close without touching on the Family cult’s brutal killings of at least nine people in LA. Orchestrated by long-time criminal and phoney guru Charles Manson, a pretence of countercultural profundity and daily doses of LSD garnered him a dedicated follower base who ate out the palm of his hand, commanding his gaggle of bewildered misfits and runaways to carry out vicious murders on the city’s celebrity world.

Playing The Beatles’ ’68 double LP on repeat at their Spahn Ranch hideout, Manson credited the entire album as prophesying his paranoid race war theory, highlighting Paul McCartney’s raucous ‘Helter Skelter’ as a major underpinning to his apocalyptic vision. Predicting the end times would be triggered by targeting the Beverly Hills neighbourhood, an entourage of zealots carried out the Tate-LaBianca murders, Manson asking upon their return, “Was it really helter-skelter?”, besmirching the title with a terrible new connotation.