Heavy Metal

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores how horror movies reflected and refracted a moral panic over heavy metal music that peaked in the 1980s. The Exorcist (1973) depicted “backmasking” and linked this concept to the demonic in the popular imagination. By the 1980s there were a series of lawsuits alleging that backmasked messages in metal albums caused suicides and musicologists were testifying about the influence of backmasking before congress. Many low-budget horror films from the 1980s depicted rock bands either committing murder or being murdered, as well as adolescents being influenced by backmasking and other supernatural effects associated with metal music. In 1993, this discourse contributed directly to the trial of the West Memphis Three and indirectly to the murder of “black metal” enthusiast Øystein Aarseth in Norway.