I was playing some Brutal Legend and I got a hankering to go back and watch some of those VH1 Metal documentaries (the really awesome multi-part ones where they interview basically EVERYone from the 70s-80s metal scene), and there was something that struck me more this time around: 1) Rob Halford knows his shit. The dude is MAD informed and really clever. 2) The groups that protested metal (mostly Christian, but I don't want to over-generalize) came up with some pretty hilarious ways that metal was corrupting our youth (just like rock and roll before it and the blues before that etc etc), but one of the funniest, for me, was the idea that Judas Priest (of which Mr. Halford is the frontman) had recorded backward (and therefore subliminal...of course) messages that would cause the hapless teenagers listening to it to be overwhelmed with the urge to kill themselves. This was in the wake of two teenagers listening to some Judas Priest, and then killing themselves.

Now obviously, this is a patent lie. If subliminal messages could be so easily and effectively implanted in someone, it would have been acquired and weaponized by someone at some point. There was some kind of musical anomaly that made it sound like the background of the track was saying "Do it, do it" but as Halford pointed out "Do what? Why would you assume it meant kill yourself?" He then went on to "If we could program teenagers to do our bidding, why would we have them kill themselves?! Why wouldn't it be 'Go buy lots more Judas Priest albums, and pick up a t-shirt while you're at it!'" And I realized: it's because these groups think that bands like Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Slayer are evil for its own sake. Which is something that doesn't exist.

Stalin's governing led to the deaths of 20,000,000 Russians, but he thought it would lead to Russia being stronger than it ever was. Even serial killers have motives, twisted and sometimes incomprehensible though they are, beyond "Cause I'm the BADGUY." But that's not how these people see the artists and us, their fans. They see us as either victims or enablers, depending on our age and whatnot, but they see these people as EVIL. They are pure evil for its own sake, they are from the devil, they want us to die for no reason. It doesn't make sense otherwise, why WOULD you program your fans, the people who have made your career, to self-destruct? There's no purpose and there's no point. I find it frightening that these people have been so indoctrinated by whatever drives them that they truly believe that there is a scourge like this and that it isn't some genocidal dictator, or an abusive family, or even a madman with a knife.

They really believe it's a bunch of musicians. Or filmmakers. Or videogame developers.