I Listen to Slayer; Please Excuse Me While I Go Kill Myself
In the spring of 1999, my final semester at UWGB, I took a class on death and dying. As part of this class, I had two journal questions to answer every two weeks. One of the questions I had to answer dealt with music and suicide. Perfect. I was locked and loaded. What was supposed to be a one-page answer turned into a five-page essay for me. What follows is that essay, resurrected after more than two years, updated, edited, and expanded.
It is my strong belief that metal is unfairly branded as a menace to society with respects to suicide-causing lyrics. First and foremost, there is something called free will. A song cannot make someone do anything; and if someone does mindlessly follow what a song tells them to do, then there is a more severe problem to begin with, even before the music becomes involved. There is a huge step between listening to a song and killing oneself. Likewise, there is (or should be anyway) a huge step between listening to a song and dropping everything to go to San Francisco with some flowers in your hair. I will concede, however, that a song may possibly act as some sort of trigger (as could anything else), but again the song alone cannot cause suicide; there is a deeper, more serious underlying problem. I can already hear the argument, "OK, metal doesn't cause suicide, but it can trigger it, so we must eliminate the trigger." Impossible. Are we going to eliminate relationships? Are we going to eliminate "bad luck?" We cannot eliminate such triggers, thus they remain. Take this example. Let's suppose for a minute that hearing a song is a triggering event. Now let's suppose that listening to the song never happened. Junior might live another week until his girlfriend breaks up with him and he kills himself because of it. The girlfriend breaking up with him turns out to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Do we hold the girlfriend responsible for the death? No, of course not. So how can we hold a song responsible for a suicide just because it happens to be in Junior's CD player when he decides to take a razor blade and cut his wrists down to the bone?
It is important to remember that song lyrics are made up of words. By their very nature, words are neutral and can be no more. For example (though this is not exactly the same, the basic idea is similar), as George Carlin so eloquently points out, take the word "nigger." There is nothing inherently wrong with the word "nigger." The word is innocent, but "it's the racist asshole who's using it that you ought to be concerned about." Likewise, the song is innocent, but it's the already-suicidal person listening to it that you ought to be concerned about. Words can be very powerful, but can they be powerful enough to destroy even the most innate, animalistic desire to survive and preserve oneself? Music is a scapegoat--people are trying to pass the blame onto somebody else, and the people attempting to do this may even be part of the reason for the suicide in the first place. So, instead of accepting responsibility and what is, they try to pass the blame onto something else that many people may not be too fond of to begin with (death metal, etc.). This is the easiest thing to do in our "Don't Blame Me" society. And as a side note, don't even get me started on music and First Amendment issues (one may not agree with any given message, but it's still protected).
Before I continue, it is important to distinguish between "pop music" and rock and roll or metal. Though many people do not acknowledge it, there is a difference. "Pop" is the same six songs heard in rotation ad nauseam on the radio and played on eMpTyV (during one of those very rare times that they actually bother to play a video). Good rock and especially good metal must usually be actively searched for. With that distinction and clarification in mind, I can move forward.
I live alone, and I have tunes going all the time--in my truck, in my office, at home, morning, noon, and night. About the only thing I listen to is metal in its many various forms. I listen to it all the time, and yet somehow I am still alive, as are millions of other people. How is this possible? When Metallica plays Fade to Black in concert ("I have lost the will to live / Simply nothing more to give / There is nothing more for me / Need the end to set me free"), is there suddenly a mass suicide of 20,000 screaming, singing fans? No. For every handful of people who kill themselves and just happen to listen to metal, there are millions of other fans that somehow manage to stay alive. I would guess that, if research were conducted, there would be found similar numbers and/or proportions of suicides with respect to other types of music. And I don't mean I want numbers quoted to me from religious sources or the PMRC or something like that. I want hard statistics from an actual, legitimately published scientific study using legitimately obtained data, and this must appear in an officially recognized scientific journal of psychology, sociology, death, medicine, or similar. I need an objective, scientific examination of the correlation between suicide and music (if one actually exists, which I doubt). I want it looked at with a critical eye through the lens of science. There must be people who have killed themselves and also happen to listen to Celine Dion (you know, I still haven't seen that damn boat movie, but I digress). Does this mean that Celine Dion causes suicide? Probably not, unless it's fans of real music or metalheads who kill themselves after reflecting on the current sorry-ass state of music affairs. Of course, if I listened to Celine Dion, Britney Spears, 3 Doors Down, the Backstreet Boys, 'NSync, or any other hideous, vile, nauseating, 15-minutes-of-fame, ... "pop music," I'd probably shoot myself too, but I digress again.
So why are the same tenuous conclusions not reached with "pop music" and suicide as with metal and suicide? One reason is religion, and another reason is most people do not dislike and may even enjoy "pop music" (hence the name). Typically, anything that a majority of people do not like, particularly with respect to lifestyles and various forms of art and expression, will cause a certain level of bitching. They will bitch about it, shun it, and try to destroy it and its creators. True metal, and rock 'n' roll in general, is anti-authoritarian, is meant to piss people off, makes many people uncomfortable, and maybe even--oh horror of horrors--makes them think (many people do not like this). For these reasons, metal will always be attacked by the so-called moral majority and others who feel the need to control people, make decisions for them, and censor what they see or hear.
Then there is the issue of cause and effect. Is there a correlation between music and suicide rate? Doubtful, but maybe (and that's a gigantic maybe). Does music cause suicide? No. It is always difficult to determine what is causing what. Is the "suicidal music" leading the person to think about suicide, or is the suicidal person seeking "suicidal music" as perhaps validation of his or her thoughts? I know, for myself, it was the latter. The thoughts and ideas in my head led me to find My Dying Bride and Anathema and all the others, and I will always continue my search. I usually feel better after listening to some good doom metal. It lets me know I'm not alone. It lets me think, "Hey, there is somebody else out there that feels like I do," and they're not just trying to be polite by saying they know how I feel. They're not just trying (if at all) to help make me feel better. It was the same thing with Satanism. I remember reading The Satanic Bible for the first time and sitting there thinking, "This sounds like me."
There is a popular misconception that teenage males have the highest suicide rate. This is, in fact, false. To quote Robert Marrone in Death, Mourning, and Caring (p. 59), "The most likely candidates for suicide are elderly, white, alcoholic men." This can be easily verified by viewing the suicide statistics on the CDC, WHO, or NIMH websites. It should be obvious then that something deeper than music is behind a lot of suicides because there aren't a lot of 70-year-old metalheads out there. They either get eaten or sacrificed by the younger generation (heh-heh).
Just because I listen to My Dying Bride's Grace Unhearing doesn't mean I go and shoot myself. Similarly, just because I listen to Pantera's Good Friends and a Bottle of Pills doesn't mean I go and have sex with my buddy's girlfriend. Just because I listen to Metallica's Fight Fire with Fire doesn't mean I want nuclear armageddon. Just because I listen to Slayer's Altar of Sacrifice doesn't mean I go and kill Christians. I sometimes only wish people were that weak-minded because then I could have them do my bidding. I've been an outcast my whole life, and I listen to metal. I'm the token poster boy for antisocial behavior. I haven't killed myself, and I'm generally well-behaved. To the best of my knowledge, I haven't killed anybody else, either. I'm not a threat to society. Only if you fuck with me do you have to worry. Suicide, like murder, war, and so on, is multidimensional. No one thing causes any of these. Again I go back to the straw analogy I made earlier. A song alone cannot cause anything. There is a deeper underlying problem. Ozzy doesn't cause wars.
Though metal certainly does not need defending, it does not care for what the masses think. It is a form of art and self-expression, a form of release, a form of escapism. A lot of misconceptions would probably be cleared up if those outside metal even just tried to understand or examine it instead of (or, at the very least, before) simply summarily dismissing it outright. 80s rock that many people seemed to be so fond of was all about Spandex, hair, getting high, and getting laid. I'm not necessarily talking about that here. It's not all childish and meaningless primal sexual urges. Many times it's a great deal deeper than that (the really good stuff anyway), exploring anger, worries, fears, etc. Metal can be, and many times is, very personal, and it is about the only genre of music that continues to show any sort of creativity. It is a mecca for experimentation. The musicians do what they want without worrying about record sales or guys with ties. They know the fans will be there.
Metal is sometimes misunderstood or misinterpreted as brainwashing or a form of mind control. Music isn't brainwashing; going to church is brainwashing. Religion is mind control. As James Hetfield sings, "Energy derives from both the plus and negative." Metal is just usually better at what some would call "the negative." I, however, just happen to believe that the world needs some more of this. Furthermore, it is sometimes important to look not necessarily at the message but to instead look at why it is or ask why it is. Why is Junior seeking this kind of music? It is obviously not useless, mindless garbage because there is a market for it, and yet somehow, even with all this killing, there will continue to be a market for it. It will never go away. If anything, it will just get more extreme and go even further underground.
I seem to be straying a bit off the topic. I'll try now to bring things back around. Throughout rock's relatively short history, certain songs have been singled out as being particularly "evil." Ozzy Osbourne's Suicide Solution is one such song. Soon after it was released, it was blamed for causing at least one suicide. The song is, in fact, a warning about the dangers of alcohol--'solution' being a mixture and not a way of dealing with a problem. This is fairly obvious if one reads the lyrics. In fact, the only real thing misleading about the song is the title. I believe it was Ozzy himself that even said, and I don't have the exact quote so I'm paraphrasing, 'If I wrote music for people who shot themselves, I wouldn't have very many fans.' Pantera's Suicide Note Pt. II is certainly a foreboding title. However, the song is actually against suicide with lines like "Cowards only try it" and "Don't you try to die like me." It's a warning against drug use as it was written after Phil Anselmo, the lead singer, accidentally overdosed on heroin and lived. The list of bands and songs that refer to suicide (as either something positive or negative) is endless, and I won't bore you with any further examples.
Metal is often attacked for its Satanic themes as well, which also, of course (as any reasonable person obviously knows), causes suicide. In fact, Satanism as outlined by the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton Szandor LaVey, is a very tolerant, benign religion--not quite like the television Satanism of human sacrifice and Black Mass. Satanism maintains the idea that life is important and worth celebrating, therefore, "suicide is frowned upon by the Satanic religion" (Anton Szandor LaVey).
Finally, I believe largely in a live and let live approach to life. At the risk of sounding cliché, it would be pretty boring if we were all the same and listened to the same music (just try watching eMpTyV for a couple of hours). As I mentioned before, the music that I listen to reflects my thoughts and ideas in my head, not the other way around. It lets me know that there is somebody else out there who feels the way I do, be it suicidal or just plain angry. And I know exactly what to reach for based on my mood at any given moment. If I want to be at a funeral, I put Skepticism into the CD player. If I'm pissed, I put in Pantera. If I want to destroy some religious icons, I put in Immolation. After a few minutes of metal, somehow the world, though still a shitty place, doesn't seem to be quite as bad.
With all its anti-establishment themes, death themes, insanity themes, drug and alcohol themes, anti-religion themes, and so on, metal (especially underground metal) and even more mainstream rock 'n' roll will always be a popular release for many and an unpopular musical style for many more. It will, however, never die. In conclusion, Ozzy said it best when he said, "You can't kill rock and roll." ...And it won't kill you.
Originally written:
April, 1999; September 8-9, 2001
Put online:
September 16, 2001
Discussion:
N/A
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