Salem, Satanic Panic, and Slayer

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Good afternoon everyone. It is Monday, April the seventh, twenty twenty five. It is currently twelve thirteen pm Central time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, right here next to me, to my right is all of my stereo equipment. Right I have my Yamaha receiver, I have a streaming device, I have headphones. All of my stereo equipment is right there to my right. It's there, and I spend a lot of time with that stereo equipment and with a pair of headphones, on listening to a lot of music, and in listening to music. Recently, well, I started thinking about tomorrow. Now, what is tomorrow? Tomorrow is April the eighth, and I've been thinking specifically as I've been listening to music about April the eighth, nineteen eighty five. April the eighth, nineteen eighty five. For some of you, that day means absolutely nothing, But for me, it's a very significant day because I was a teenager in nineteen eighty five and

1:35 I was in love with music. I'm still in love with music. I was obviously necked deep in the chaos of youth and the chaos of my crazy life that I went through, in all the horrible things that happened to me, And I was also living in a time when people were convinced that the devil had moved into the record store. It was the height of the Satanic panic. Preachers were warning parents were terrified. And what were they warning about? What were parents terrified about? Well, they were worried and terrified and warning about this thing called heavy metal.

2:24 To many Christians, it wasn't music anymore. It was warfare. And on that day, April eighth, nineteen eighty five, the band's Slayer released the album Hell Awaits. I bought the album the day it came out. I remember peeling off the plastic, looking at the cover art and thinking this is going to tick off a lot of people. And it did. It became one of the most condemned albums of the era. It was blamed for everything from spiritual corruption to demonic possession. But I also remember something else, something more personal. Didn't necessarily feel evil to me. I definitely didn't feel possessed. I felt alive. I felt like someone was telling stories that were very dark, very wild, and extremely terrifying, but also they were real in a way that the fear mongering never was. There was something real to me about the stories. There was something dark, There was something maybe that captured the pain and suffering

3:56 that I was going through in my life. At that time. It felt more dare I say, it felt more real than all of the fear and paranoia and screaming I was hearing all around me in the middle of the Satanic panic and what parents were saying and pastors were saying. Looking back now from twenty twenty five, I see clearly what I couldn't name then that very moment. It was more than a cultural class It was more than a culture war. It was a storm of fear. It was a storm of fiction and misunderstanding, not unlike something that happened before in American history. So today, nearly forty years later, I'm going to invite you to take a journey. We're going to take a journey that begins in a Puritan village.

5:00 We're going to wind through a national panic, and then it's going to explode through the speakers of a Slayer album and I'm going to ask some questions like what happens when fear replaces truth and the church forgets how to think? This is going to be the story of Salem, the Satanic Panic and the band Slayer. Does that sound okay to you? Are you interested? Do you want to take the journey? Well, here we go. Let's go back way back in sixteen ninety two. It was young girls in Salem, Massachusetts. They were trembling, crying, and they begin to name names. They accused neighbors, they accused servants, They even accused family. Not a theft, not of murder, but of consorting with the devil, of signing the Book of Satan, of summoning dark spirits. And in a town that feared damnation more than death, that was enough. Over the course of a year, nearly two hundred people would be accused of witchcraft. Nineteen were hanged, one man was crushed under stones,

6:32 others rotted in prison. Their only real crime was being the object of suspicion in a world shaped by fear. Their only real crime was being the object of suspicion and a world shaped by fear. Centuries later, April eighth, nineteen eighty five, a new name enters the conversation. Slayer, a thrash metal band from California. They're loud, they are aggressive, they're fast, and they're terrifying. Their second album, Hell Awaits, arrives like a sonic inferno, filled with screaming guitars, chaotic solos, and lyrics about hell, demons, death and destruction. To a generation of metal fans, it's considered a masterpiece to many Christians.

7:41 It's proof that the devil is here and he has a record deal. And just like that, that old fear, that old fear that was in Salem arrived, Well for me, it arrived in Buffalo Gap, Texas. That's where it arrives with me and all around us. So you would begin to hear people say things like this, preacher saying things like this, This is not just music, it's satanic and doctrination.

8:22 Kids are being brainwashed by heavy metal. I heard it myself over and over again. I heard people say backward messages. They say kill your parents, they say worship Satan. Just play the record backwards. These are modern day witches and they're after your children. Oh. I heard this stuff over and over and over again. It was everywhere the old fear, the old panic had arrived. It was no longer in Salem, it was all across the United States. You see, in the seventeenth century it was the devil in the woods, and the twentieth it was the devil on stage. And in both cases the reaction was the same panic, accusation, and the belief that we must protect the truth, even if it means bending it a little bit, even if it means maybe not really being I don't know, in line with the truth. This is the story of two moments in history, separated by centuries, yet bound by the exact same fear. A fear that forgets truth, that replaces discernment with paranoia, a fear that teaches Christians to condemn without understanding and to fight darkness with maybe something dark,

10:02 then the very darkness you're trying to fight. You see, this is the story of Salem. This is the rise of the Satanic Panic, and this is the album called hell Owaits. The town of Salem was small, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else, and they also knew their sins, or at least they thought they did. Puritanism ran deep. The Bible wasn't just scripture. It was the law, it was the news, it was the entire worldview. Sin wasn't just a private concern, it was a public threat.

10:45 So when a group of girls began to convulse, scream, and claim invisible forces were attacking them, the town listened. At first it seemed like a mystery. Then a few names were whispered, then shouted. Accusations flew like sparks, and soon a fire consumed the town. No physical evidence, no proof, just fear, hysteria, and the terrifying sense the devil was real, near and infecting the community. The accused had few defenses. Deny it, and you must be lying. The devil teaches his followers to deceive, confess. You may be spared execution if you name someone else and the church. It didn't bring clarity, it added fuel to the fire. Ministers thundered from the pulpits about Satan's presence. Testimonies of spectral visions were accepted as proof. Logic was replaced with certainty. They knew they were right because they were afraid. But the trials came to an end. Eventually, the judges stopped listening.

11:53 The girls were no longer believed. The fear collapsed under the weight of its own lies, and Salem was left with blood on its hands and a stain on the conscience of the American Church that would never fully fade. Why begin here, Why go back to sixteen ninety two, because they shows us a pattern, the very same pattern that would rise again during my teenage life, the very same pattern that happens in Salem. That's why when people sometimes they're curious why I love Salem so much, Because when I go there and I learn and to just try to feel everything that could have possibly have been happening there in sixteen ninety two, in some ways, I'm like, well, it wasn't sixteen ninety two. It was the nineteen eighties.

12:44 It was Buffalo Gap, Texas. Ho But it felt very very, very very very similar, because the same pattern would rise again in the nineteen eighties, where Christians fearing evil would forget truth, music, fiction, and storytelling would be mistaken for doctrine, where bearing false witness became a part of spiritual warfare. Hey make this accusation, make this claim, get this information wrong, this and it became conspiracy, paranoia, fear, insanity, and it was everywhere, and you couldn't escape it, especially if you were a teenager in the nineteen eighties, especially if you were a teenager anywhere where there was a church on every street corner like here in West Texas, you couldn't get around it. You couldn't everywhere you went and where.

13:41 Just like Salem, it would all eventually fall apart. But first, before the flames die down, we need to see how the Satanic panic began. Satanic panic didn't happen overnight. It wasn't born out of a single moment. It crept in slowly, feeding on suspicion, rumor, and a growing fear that America's youth were slipping away into something dark. By the late nineteen seventies. In the early nineteen eighties, the United States was changing. The sexual Revolution had left scars, The drug crisis was visible in every corner. Violent crime was rising, divorce rates were climbing, and beneath the surface, there was a spiritual unease, a growing sense that something evil was behind it all. And Christians they were looking for a name, they were looking for a face, they were looking for a cause. Say that the first spark came in nineteen eighty.

15:04 I think we could probably go back to maybe nineteen I believe seventy seven. We'll talk about what happened in nineteen seventy seven. We'll save that for a little later, but a lot of people will go that it was nineteen eighty where the first spark was lit for the Satanic panic. And once again, it's a book that's interesting. Remember the story of Salem and a particular book that ended up in the pastor's study. Remember, okay, all right, So once again it's a book. The first spark. The first spark came in nineteen eighty with a book called Michelle Remembers. Does anybody remember Michelle Remembers? It was written by a psychiatrist and his patient, later his wife. It told the story of recovered memories, ritual abuse, a Satanic cult, animal sacrifices, black robes, demons, and the devil himself. There was no evidence, there was no coroboration, but it did not matter. The book sold millions. It became a cultural phenomenon, especially in Christian circles. Churches, radio shows, and seminaries took it seriously, and it was used as proof that Satanic cults were everywhere, hiding in neighborhoods, daycares, and high schools.

16:37 Once again a book. I just find it interesting that Salem and we talked about Cotton Mather and we talked about it, We talked about so much and how this all played out in Salem. Again, just even telling the story, I feel like it's am I telling the story of Salem, or I'm telling the story of the nineteen eighties. Well, Salem. I have to rely on history, right, I have to rely on document in the eighties. I can rely a lot on my own memory because I was right there in the midst of all of this. You may hear a preacher in the nineteen eighties say they're out there, the occultists, the devil worshipers, even in your child's school.

17:18 Don't be fooled. The enemy is not hiding in the shadows. He's already in your home. The parents were like, how how did he get here? How do I get rid of him? See, that's when the panix begins to spread. Talk shows air testimonies of ritual abuse, survivors, pastors, warns of symbols inside of cartoons. Detectives gave lectures about cult crimes, most of which had no actual evidence. And then the daycare trials happened. The most famous case began in California that mc martin. Pre school children were interviewed with suggestive questions.

18:07 They were told that bad things had happened. Eventually they began to tell stories. Hmmm, so we're back to children. How does Salem begin? Children? This is crazy the way this goes well, A book, a book children, children see. If you don't know history, you repeat history even if you know it. It goes in cycles in some ways. So but in this case, we're not in Salem. We're in California. It's a preschool. Children are interviewed with suggestive questions. They were told that bad things had happened, and eventually they begin to tell stories about tunnels under the school, animal sacrifices, and even being flown on broomsticks. There was no physical evidence. There was no tunnels, there was no photos, no signs of abuse. But it didn't matter. The accusations were enough. Parents were terrified. Pastors preached about hidden cults.

19:11 TV specials ran dramatic reenactments of Satanic rituals, complete with robe figures and candles. It was sixteen ninety two all over again, but this time the witches were daycare workers and the Puritans were Christian broadcasters. You would hear things like this. Dozens of children claimed to have been satan, Dozens of children claimed to have seen Satanic sacrifices. Some say the occult has infiltrated American culture at every level. Heavy metal music, Ouiji boards, even Halloween. Are our kids being brainwashed? Oh? And I remember Halloween. I don't remember the exact year it was, but here in West Texas a curfew was issued and you could not be out at night on Halloween because teams of Satanic you know, evil Satanic priests were roaming about. Teams of them. Are teams of Satanic cults. I don't know the exact words they use. And they were going to kidnap your children and sacrifice them, so you could We couldn't go out and go trick or treating because we were going to be kidnapped and murdered by Satanist. Oh, but we could go to church for I guess a fall festival. We could do that. Now. It did not take long before music,

20:44 especially heavy metal music, became the next battleground. Now trying to figure how it all. I think music was always and from my perspective, music was always a part of the battleground. It was always there. It was always was there a turning point. It's hard to say a lot of this all kind of blurs together. Obviously, the book in nineteen eighty really sparked the daycare case. Was everywhere you heard about the daycare case. All the way into the nineties, you heard different stories about daycare cases and teams of Satanists and all this. These things were they were just everywhere. You just couldn't get away from it. And of course you didn't have the ability to go look anything up, check anything. You just had to rely on whatever you were hearing. And there was this I don't know if you can really understand, there was this great sense of fear. Like on one hand, if you say you were a teenager, I mean, all the kids would start telling stories. We were out, you know here in West Texas that were like, look, it was Friday night.

21:49 We were at Lake Fort Fannam, that's the lake here in Abilene, Texas, and we were out there and all of a sudden we saw this circle of people in black robes and they were offering a sacrifice. You didn't know if the stories the kids were telling were true or false. All of a sudden it was, and then you were really worried, like, oh, I wonder if there's really these like, you know, teams of Satanic serial killers who will try to kill me. And then you were like, well, I wonder if. I wonder if if I'm gonna get possessed, and I would like there was a little bit of concern trying to figure out Like a one hand, you're like, this is ridiculous, but then there would be times, maybe late at night, You're like, maybe I should check the door again, is it locked? You know, like you were really you were kind of conflicted, like in some ways you were like, man, this is ridiculous. On the other hand, you're like, well, I wonder, I wonder if I should be scared. But then music becomes the target. Bands like Black Sabbath, ACDC, Judas Priest, and of course Iron Maiden were suddenly recast not as musicians but missionaries of Satan.

22:59 The lyrics were dissected, album covers were scrutinized, turntables were reversed looking for secret messages. And I meant to say the lyrics were dissected. Album covers were scrutinized, turntables were reversed. Looking for a secret message. A movement of Christian watchdogs began holding rock seminars. Oh the rock seminars? What am I familiar with them? If it was a Friday night and I was like, man, there's not much going on. Oh, look there's a church in town doing a rock seminar.

23:42 Let me get there, and I would get ready, get dressed, boom, I would go to the rocksmen. Oh. I would always put on my iron Maiden shirt or a Judas priest or a black Sabbath shirt. I would always make sure I did that. Yeah, I was being a little bit rebellioused, but I went like, oh, I get to go here. How bad all of this music is, and how I'm going to be by Satan? Let me go? And I would go and I would hear them like oh. They would try to play things backwards. Listen, listen, it says Satan. Oh play this song backwards. Ooh, it says smoke marijuana. Oh, listen to this. Oh it's everywhere. Satan's gonna get us. Satan's gonna get us. And in many cases then they would talk about the lyrics, not even understanding what they're talking about. Lies misrepresentation, giving fraudulent stories about what the bands were doing, literally fraudulent stories, and I would just sit there and mock it and mockt now I would I was always respectful in the sense of I wouldn't say anything out loud, but I would just be sitting there shaking my head. And then of course after that, all the parents in there were all scared to death.

24:44 Oh no, I gotta go, and so then they would run home and Friday night find all the I can't believe you have this demonic thing in our house. It's not going to stay here. And then on Saturdays they would get in the parking lot and burn all the albums. Okay, yeah, I oh, I watched it all play out over and over. So now the rock seminars begin where youth pastors would play distorted clips of songs backwards and claim, Hey, did you hear that it says kill your parents? Did you hear it says kill your parents? Now you're playing it backwards, but that's what it's meant to be there. Oh oh, it says hell satan. And then the parents were getting all nervous and like oh, and they were looking over at their kids and the kids are like, what is happening to me? What? What? How did I end up in this mess? And then the preachers would say something like this isn't just music, it's indoctrination and it's working.

25:40 The devil has found a way to reach your children through their headphones. Now what follows is both surreal and tragic. Christian youth groups began hosting album burning ceremonies. Vinyl records were smashed with hammers, Cassette tapes were thrown into bonfires. Teens were encouraged to renounce their satanic music and dedicate themselves to Christ. Now, some of it, I am not going to listen. I'm going to try to be fair.

26:20 Some of this I believe was sincere to some level. What Some of this had good intentions. Some of it I think was performative, I really do. But all of it was rooted and the same thing that once consumed Salem, absolute out of control fear and paranoia, and it's into that cultural firestorm. All of this is going on. The book Michelle remembers all of these satanic cults, sacrifices, all of this stuff going on, the evils of rock and roll.

27:04 All of this is happening. I'm in the middle of all of this storm, and I just want to go to the record store. It's all I want to do. And there it is Hell Awaits Slayer, And as soon as I see it, I'm like, Oh, I gotta buy this. I have to buy this. I gotta buy this. I gotta buy this before it gets burnt, right, Okay, I gotta buy this. Hell Awaits was released on April eighth, nineteen eighty five. There is some dispute over Some say it's released in a different day, but I believe April the eighth, nineteen eighty five. That's the day I purchased it, and I believe that's the day it was released. Okay, So if someone wants to get into a major musical historical argument, I understand there's some dispute, but I think for many that's the day you found it in the record store. I just remember April the eighth because I remember bringing that album home, all right. I remember listening to it and I was like, what is this? What is going on? There were lyrics about hell, about demons, about murder, about damnation, and with the cover art that looked like the Gates of Hell had been torn open.

28:26 The riffs, the guitar riffs sounded like pure chaos. Hell Aways wasn't just another album, especially to the church, it was. They felt it was a summoning, and for those already convinced the devil was moving through the music industry, Slayer became the perfect villain. Just as in Salem. No one asked if the accusations were true, only whether they were frightening enough. And I'm right there in the middle of it. I'm listening to the album going wow, whoa, whoa, no way, what is happening now? At the time, did I have a good sense of exactly how to interpret it? Not not, as I grew in my understanding and how to analyze art and how to understand storytelling. But I still knew that it was gonna be misconstrued and misunderstood, and I definitely knew it was going to be attacked. I almost felt like, Okay, is anybody looking through the window? Is anybody going to see me? Because if I get caught with this, I'm going down. Okay, I'm going down because this this is definitely not allowed. So April eighth, nineteen eighty five, Slayer releases what was their second full length studio album, Hell Awaits. You can go to any streaming service right now and look at it. You can go to and look at the album cover. You're gonna look at it now and think this is ridiculous. It's gonna look kind of maybe cheesy, over the top, ridiculous, right.

30:00 But in nineteen eighty five it was ooh, it's scary, Okay, it was completely different world now the album only has seven tracks. It's just a little over thirty what thirty seven minutes, I think it's about it's about thirty seven minutes, and there's not a single moment of safety to be found anywhere. And those thirty seven minutes, there's no safety to be found. There's nowhere to hide, there's nowhere to run, there's nowhere. It opens with I guess the only way some people would describe it as reversed demonic whispers. It's being played in reverse and they're saying, join us, join us, join us, and then all at once it explodes. Drums fire like machine guns, guitars slash, vocals roar. It doesn't feel like music. It feels like you're being assaulted. That's the only way to describe it. That's what it felt like, especially if you had headphones on or some good speakers.

31:15 All of a sudden, it's like, ooh, this reverse ooh, there's there's this reverse stuff going on, backward masking. No no, no, no, no no, Well, I wonder what they're saying. What are they saying? Why are they saying satan? But they were saying join us. Then all of a sudden, it explodes the drums, just the guitars. I mean I could sit there and try to I could. I could walk you through every part of it. The vocals are like, yeah, okay, okay, is that a good Is that a good way? Okay? Maybe not the best. You get the idea. And again, it doesn't even feel like music. It feels like you're being assaulted. It's like when you first hear it, especially at that point, you're like, man, it's like goosebumps come up all across your buddy, a chill goes down your spine, and you're like okay, and and and of course in that point in time, you feel like you it's just something you've discovered. It's not like you, you know, you open up a streaming service and you feel like, well, everyone has this. You feel like that you've found it, that you stumbled upon this, that maybe nobody else is even hearing this. You feel like it's something like what is going on here? In some ways, it's felt like a new kind of heavy. Now we could get into a musical argument. Was it a new kind of heavy?

32:25 Was it really that different? But it felt different? Okay, I'm not going to get into a massive musical argument over how different it was. But it felt like we're not in Kansas anymore. And some ways, Slayer wasn't just playing faster or louder. They were pushing thrash metal into something darker, more chaotic, longer songs because some of the songs have a longer running time, a more sinister atmosphere in some cases no choruses, no hooks, just a torrent of sound and dark darkness, I think is a good way to say it. In some ways, Hell Awaits wasn't made to be catchy. It was made to terrify you and scare you to death. The best time to listen, and my estimation the best time to listen, and the first time I listened to the album was at night.

33:25 I don't remember exactly what time I remember buying the album earlier that day, and I think I had some conversation with people like what album did you buy? Oh you got you got that? Don't tell any basically, like, hey, you better put that in a brown paper bag, don't let anybody see it, or the local church is gonna come get it and smash it with a hammer and burn it in the fire and try to cast demons out of you. What are you doing? You're playing with the devil man. Okay, run and I'm like, I'm gonna run right home and put on some headphones. I waited till night. I don't remember what time I wanted, like the perfect telling of the story, it was mid night, but I just know it was night. And when I put on the music, I was like, like I was watching a horror movie at midnight. That's what it felt like.

34:15 At the time. Metal was already branching off into extremes. Okay, I think Metallica had already released Ride the Lightning. I think it was the year before Exodus. Mega Death Possessed were pushing speed and technicality that that was already happening. But I and this is the way I feel, I cannot be like musically completely make a dogmatic assertion here, but it felt like to me that Slayer, while other people were maybe branching off into extremes and speed and and different the way that we're doing things technically, I felt like Slayer brought hell into the music. Is that an accurate description for the music historians out there? The title track is nearly seven minutes of rising torment and a descent into damnation. Praise of Death blends nihilism with galloping rifts. At Dawn They Sleep explores vampirism. And then one of the most infamous tracks. Oh okay, now this one is where you may not want your children around. Okay.

35:35 The next song is the one. This is the one that caused all the chaos. Necrophiliac, Necrophiliac. This sparked so much controversy. This created widespread panic, This created this created, This created chaos. Necrophiliac is one of the most infamous tracks. It is told from the point of view of a man possessed by a grotesque desire, and it doesn't end in glory. It ends in judgment. Quoting from the lyric from the album from the song Necrophiliac, Cursed Birth of the Depraved Scent to Live in Hell. Even at its most disturbing, the album doesn't celebrate evil. It portrays it and it then shows it being condemned. And that's what people did not get. It's disturbing, no way to get around.

36:49 The album is disturbing, but it's not celebrating the evil. It's really just portraying it. It's painting the picture and then in some ways it shows it being condemned. Awaits, Get the hell Awaits. You see the album Hell Awaits. It was not a satanic manifesto. It was more of a horror anthology. It was a musical version of maybe ec Comics or Lovecraft or Dante's Inferno. That's what I likened it to as a teenager is Dante's Inferno because as a teenager, oh, Dante's Inferno was really awesome and cool, and you know everybody, you wanted a copy of Dante's Inferno to be, you know, really the cool kid, right, Okay, well maybe maybe to be the cool kid and the real cool not the cool kid that everyone thought was cool, but the really cool kid, because you were so you know, against what everybody else was doing. You see, the the lyrics are told through the lens of a band that wanted to push every single limit. The guitarist, one of the guitarist uses Too, who wrote most of the lyrics, said we were never Satanist. We liked the imagery, the darkness.

38:12 It fit the music. The band singer, a Catholic, repeatedly insisted the lyrics were storytelling. They're not belief. It's an all theater, he said, It's like reading a horror story. That's what we do. So why didn't anyone listen to the explanation, Why didn't anyone listen? Because Hella Waits didn't just land in the record store. It landed in the middle of a war over culture, a war in which fiction and fear were already indistinguishable. To many Christians in nineteen eighty five, Slayer wasn't telling stories. They were summoning demons.

38:54 Churches hosted seminars warning about the album. It was cited in pamphlets about c Tanic recruitment. Some even claimed it was responsible for teen suicides or animal sacrifice, and youth groups across the country Hell Awaits was burned in parking lot bonfires. Its name alone was enough to justify condemnation. You couldn't let anyone know you had a Slayer album, especially the hell Awaits album. And even if you were trying to like whoa whoa, wha, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, No, no, no, you're misunderstanding. Burn the album you Satanists, and it's like whoa, could everyone come? Could everyone take a step back? This is Salem all over again. Few Christians actually listen to the lyrics, even fewer considered the music's complexity, and almost no one to stop to ask what is the album actually saying? What is the album actually doing? And Salem they asked is this woman a witch? In nineteen eighty five they asked is this band satanic? And in both questions, in both cases the question was framed to produce only one answer. So in Salem they asked is this woman a witch? And in nineteen eighty five they asked is this band satanic? And in both cases the questions that were framed to produce only one answer guilty Satanist, which

40:26 die Burn. The panic around Hella Waits wasn't based on theology. It wasn't rooted in careful analysis of lyrics or themes. It was based on assumption, it was based on fear. It was based on a reflective, a reflexive kind of being. You're just being reactive. Let me state it that way. You're being It was on a reactive response that said, if it sounds evil, it must be evil. If it looks scary, it must be satanic. This response did not require discern It only discussed. It didn't produce understanding, It only produced isolation. And then rejecting Slayer so forcefully the church.

41:12 The church missed the opportunity to do something better, to ask questions, to examine, to reach people to let me say it this way, and rejecting Slayer so forcefully, the church missed the opportunity to do something better, to ask questions, to examine. Here's the big one, to teach people how to analyze then simply react. Now, what if Christians had treated hell awaits not as a gateway to hell, but as a mirror reflecting back the world's fascination with darkness and judgment. What if Christians would have done that I have treated to Hey, this is not a gateway to hell, but it's a mirror. Maybe it's reflecting back how many times people are fascinated with darkness? And judgment. What instead of burning albums, there had been conversations. What if we taught young people to see through art, not just to fear it. We need to explore that. But but first we may need to actually do this. We may to we need we may need to ask what was actually happening in the music? What did hell Await say and what did it not say? And what would it look like to actually analyze the lyrics honestly without panic, fear and screaming. When people condemn hell a Weights, they usually

42:44 hadn't actually heard it. If they had, they if they would have. If they had, they obviously hadn't listened closely. Because the lyrics weren't incantations. They weren't religious sermons. They were stories. Yes they were dark, Yes they were disturbing, Yes they were often very grotesque, but they were stories. Nonetheless, like horror fiction or classic mythology. Slayer used shocking imagery to evoke emotion, and yet the church read it as a confession of belief. They mistook a narrator for a missionary. Today, you know, just a little well a day before, less than twenty four hours away from the album's anniversary, I want to try to set the record straight, I'm going to walk through the album track by track quickly, and I'm going to ask what is each song actually saying?

43:44 What kind of story is actually being told? And does it invite us to evil or does it betray evil and all its horror? So let's begin with the opening track, hell Aways. Now I can't play anything for copyright reasons. I wish I could, because I would play each part and break it down. Now, as soon as the album started, most of you be like, what is this? Is evil? Oh no, it's bad, it's loud? What is this? I can't stand it? No, no, And I understand because not everyone likes metal. I understand. I know in the and I know in Christianity. If it has a beat, it's em all okay. But all right it does have a beat, Well it's more like okay, but all right, you get the idea. It's more like it's not just singing. It's more like okay, and I understand that's everybody's like evil, evil, evil evil evil, garlic a wooden steak, silver bullets. Okay, okay, we got oh no, okay, I just everyone calmed down.

44:39 All right, Well, I'm not going to play Anything. Track one is Hell Awaits the Trot. Title track opens with back masked whispers repeating, join us, join us, Join us. I don't remember exactly how many times it says it, but it's there. This is fuel for youth pastors and cassette burning crusaders. But what follows isn't a celebration of Satan. It's a nightmare vision. It's a journey into hell, filled with torment and loss of identity. You have lines like the final judgment is passed on you, the gates of hell lie waiting as you see your fate. It's not a recruitment song. It's a condemnation narrative. It describes judgment, not salvation, and it describes it in hellish terms. This is Dante by distortion pedal. This is Dante's Inferno, but it's just done with a distortion pedal, double bass pedal, two guitars, and a growling type of vocal delivery. It evokes the terror of damnation, not the thrill of it.

45:51 And again for me, I was like, when everyone's screaming about the album, I'm like Dante's Inferno for crying out loud. This is Dante's Inferno, just it's cooler. This is better than just reading Dante's Inferno. But of course nobody in the church wants to hear that. So there's track number one, Hell Awaits, and it kind of gives hey, what awaits? Hell? Judgment, condemnation, damnation. That's how the track, that's how the album begins. That really begins to tell the story because immediately in a wait you could ask awaits for whom? Well, the very next track is going to tell you because kill again.

46:33 Here we meet a serial killer. The song is written in the first person, a twisted inner monologue of someone who lives to kill, lines like my need to kill grow stronger, I love to watch you die. Well, clearly this is now who does hell await? Well, you get the idea. This isn't glorification. It's a psychological whrror. It's a slayer version of American psycho. It's a descent into a murderous mind, and crucially, it ends with no redemption, no celebration, just obsession and madness. It's a warning, not a manual. Then we have at Dawn Day Sleep, the track shifts into the supernatural vampires that describes the undead stalking their prey, feeding on blood, sleeping by day. This, I mean, this is stuff. There's nothing new here. It's Dracula, It's vampires. It's like, but for Christians, this, oh, this is evil. They should have been burning I guess Dracula in the public library. Never mind, Christians are always burning something, aren't they existing on the blood of men they make their sacrifice again, That's one of the lines goes something like that on the album. Again, it's horror. It's not religion.

47:54 It's classic Gothic storytelling, echoing Dracula, it filtered through Sleigh's sonic brutality. It's basically Dracula again. Double bass, pedal, screaming guitars, vocals delivered that way. And well, that's that's all it was. There's no ideology here, there's no belief system. It's just a dark tale told with musical violence. And I'm believing. And let me check here. I gotta look here. I'm trying to go some of this. I'm going with a memory. Hang on, let me let me get here, let me go here, Slayer, here's the Hell of Waight albums. Yeah, okay, I'm making sure I got all the songs in the right order. I was. I was verifying, making sure because I want to be accurate as possible. Okay, okay, hang on, let me get back to where I have all my notes here as we walk through each track, because the next track is the next track is praise of death. Now, this song explores nilism or nihilism, the belief that life is meaningless and death is inevitable. Life becomes a war, killing time until death. It's bleak, it's fast, it's furious.

49:30 It's a reflection of Cold war dread and existential despair. Also, remember in nineteen eighties, I know it's a long time to remember, we all thought we were going to be nuked by the Russians and all be dead. So this idea of this nihilistic, nihilistic approach that we're just all going to die. There's no hope, there's no reason to go on. Life simply becomes a war. We're in this cold war, killing time until death. We're all going to die. It captures that feeling in that essence. But it's a perspective. It's not a command. It's not saying this is the way you should feel. It's just giving the perspective. It's voicing the feeling of hopelessness. It's not advocating for it. Basically, it's much like the Book of Ecclesiastes. It asks, if death is certain and life is corrupt, then what's left?

50:24 Oh no, no, no, no, no, it's bad. It's horrible. It's horrible. Run burn it. Now we come to track five, and this is where I've always said, if Christians really wanted to criticize this album, this is where they should have gone. This is what they should have discussed instead of Satanist and all of this other stuff. Because the song is again necrophiliac. I've already mentioned it and told you that this is an uncomfortable subject. But this is on the album and we're about to celebrate the anniversary, and it fits right in to everything that happened in the Satanic panic. You can't you can't talk about the same panic and simply forget this. Now, this is Slayer at their most disturbing.

51:08 I think everyone will acknowledge this, Okay. This is a song written from the point of view of a man consumed by a grotesque obsession with the dead. I'll state it that way, all right. I don't have to go into any greater detail. Now, Christians understandably reacted with horror, But what they missed is how the song actually condemns the narrator with lines like cursed birth of the depraved, scent to live in hell. The narrator here, this person, this necrophiliac, who's consumed with this grotesque obsession with the dead.

51:48 He's not the hero in the song. He is a damned soul. The song is a descent and perversion that ends an eternal judgment. Is it grotesque yes? Is it endorsed absolutely not. Is the evil presented punished absolutely yes. So even then, if nobody truly took time to actually understand what the song was saying, is it disturbing, yes, it's there's no one can can say it's anything great. But everyone was running around screaming. And what ticked so many of us off as young people is the Christians who did mention the song. They didn't fairly represent it.

52:33 They didn't tell the story of the song. They lied and they misrepresented it. They bore false witness because all they could ever steak and do is lie and not tell the truth because they were more consumed with fear and paranoia. And if you're gonna win your satanic warfare by bearing false witness and lying in misrepresentation. Then I'm sorry you've already lost the spiritual war because you're condemning people with your lies and the church always that always run to these craziness and have truths and just insanity. Well you could just present it hmm. Hey, Christian young people, you could just say this way Christian young people. Hey, well, welcome to youth group tonight. I know this album is everywhere everyone's talking about. It's called hell Awaits by Slayer.

53:21 We're gonna walk through the lyrics and we're gonna discuss them, and then we can ask what do you think this will help your Christian life or hurt your Christian life? How do you think it will impact you? But the main thing is whether it impact you or hurt you. You need to know how to analyze it, and you needn't know how to interpret what this message is saying. And what we need to do is Christians is not bare false witness and not spread lives, and not spread spread paranoia, and not spread spread fear. Because see, teenagers were not like the adults sitting in the sanctuary. Do there ever living minds? But then you would probably get fired as a youth director. Then you have crips of eternity.

54:01 Here Slayer draws from basically Lovecraft and his type of horror, buried buried evil, ancient crips, and the awakening of something long forgotten. Lyrics like caverns of pain on which you feed you are now immortal. It's myth, it's fantasy, it's horror fiction, and the tradition of the Mummy, the evil dead, something along those lines. The Church read this as an occult theology, but it's actually Slayer doing what horror authors have done for generations, inventing terrifying worlds to explore the nature of fear. It's all it was doing. But of course this is a cult theology. This is a seminary of theology of the occult. And it's like just stop.

54:49 In some ways, it's either like you're just laughing and you're in the car driving away from the latest rock conference, going these Christians are out of their ever living minds, or you're just like, is do you guys ever? Stop? Do you what is wrong with all of you? And then you have hardening of the arteries. The final track is a gram commentary on moral decay. The arteries of the world are hardening, hardening nations falling under sins of man. That's literally on the The album ends with a commentary on moral decay. The arteries of the world are hardening, nations falling under sins of man. This sounds more prophetic than satanic. It's an apocalyptic vision of a world crumbling under its own weight. And maybe it's the most philological moment on the album. Though unintentional, it's straight in a strange way. It echoes Romans Chapter one, humanity spiraling into depravity and suffering the consequences. Again, it's not a celebration of sin, but a confrontation with it. But of course nobody could interpret that because Christians can't interpret, They can only condemn. They can understand it, can't analyze because they run around screaming and wanting to hang people and burn people at the stake. No one at Salem was burned at the stake. I understand that, but we can go to the European witch trials. So what the album is and what it isn't when you look closely, Hell Awaits

56:23 the album by Slayer April eighth, nineteen eighty five is a horror anthology. It's a work of musical extremity. It's a it's an extremity. Yeah, it's extreme, That's what I'm trying to say, and a showcase of depravity, judgment, fear, and chaos. Here's what it's not. It was not, it isn't now, and it never was a philological text. It was not a Satanic recruitment tool, and it was not a guide for living. I didn't listen to the Slayer album as a teenager going this is how I'm going to live my life. It was art that reflected darkness, wasn't a sermon that preached it. You know what the greatest irony was, even at its most graphic, Slayer often did what Christian art claims to do. It showed the ugliness of evil and then it revealed its consequences. But the Church never saw it because it was never taught to look. Fear doesn't analyze, it reacts, And when Christians respond to Hell awaits with bonfires instead of engagement, they missed the message, They missed the moment, and they missed the chance to teach a generation how to think instead of how to just actually fear and well run into crazy conspiracy theories and church parking lots across America. The

57:54 flames danced, records hissed and popped as they burned, vinyl warping in the heat, album covers curling into ash. Teens stood by, some cheering, some unsure, some just wanting to belong. Some of us were like, what is going on? Thinking have we returned back to Nazi Germany. The soundtrack to these burnings wasn't Slayer or Metallica. It was testimonies, sermons, and preachers declaring victory over Satan. This was the visible warfare of the church in the nineteen eighties. It was emotional, it was dramatic, and for many it was a spiritual high. But what if it was all a tragic mistake. What if instead of burning hellawaights, someone had opened the lyric sheet.

58:41 What if, instead of preaching that Slayer was summoning demons, a youth pastor had said, let's examine what this music is actually doing and why it speaks to so many people. What if instead of declaring war and culture, the church had decided to engage it honestly. Imagine a Bible study where teens analyze the lyrics of necro FilmLA, not for demonic influence, but what it says about human depravity and the need for grace. Imagine a theology class comparing Hella Weights to Dante's Inferno, recognizing that both describe judgment not to glorify it, but to terrify you into awareness. Imagine Christians who didn't bear false witness against artists, but who asked good questions and offered better answers. That kind of engagement could have produced thinkers, not just defenders. It could have taught discernment rather than fear. It could have modeled truth instead of panic. But the Church did not take that path. Instead, it defaulted to our reaction it has used many times before, condemn, burn, isolate, and blame, not because it understood what it was fighting, but because it didn't.

59:50 In the end, church was not equipped to deal with Slayer or anything like it because it had stopped teaching people how to analyze. Everything became spiritual warfare. Everything was filtered through emotional fear and moral panic. There was little room for nuance and even less for honest exploration. That's how you end up with pastors claiming demons are entering teens through guitar solos, And I even remember sitting in a rock conference where there was a story of this kid was listening to Highway to Hell by ac DC, and demons literally started crawling out of their speakers, and everybody in the church was like, as if the story was true, and I'm like, this is insanity. You people are all nuts. An entire movement convinced that storytelling is satanic.

1:00:39 It wasn't just an overreaction. It was a failure of discipleship and the damage. It wasn't just cultural, it was spiritual. When young people discovered that the Church had lied, that Slayer wasn't recruiting for Satan, that lyrics had been misquoted, misrepresented, they didn't just lose their trust in the message, they lost their trust in the messengers. The panic produced more rebellion, not less, and it taught the world that Christians don't listen, they simply react, that Christians don't think they're incapable of it. The real tragedy is the Church wasn't fighting Slayer. It was fighting a mirror, a reflection of the very darkness it claimed to understand but couldn't look at clearly. But it didn't have to be that way, and it doesn't have to be that way. We can teach Christians how to read lyrics with discernment, how to recognize the difference between fantasy and theology, how to engage art without fear, and call out lies without becoming liars ourselves. We can teach young people not just to not just what to reject, but how to think. Because the world is full of darkness, we don't need to invent it, we don't need to exaggerate it. We just need to tell the truth and do it well. The church that burned the record player thought it was winning, but in truth, it was silencing one of the greatest tools of spiritual formation. It had the chance to walk someone, to walk someone through the darkness and towards the light. For nearly a decade, the

1:02:12 Satanic panic dominated the American imagination. It didn't just shape pop culture, it shaped the church, books, seminars, conferences, Christian comedians turned experts. Everyone had a story about Satan, and they all knew someone who had barely escaped his grasp. But the stories were almost always false. The daycare case began to unravel at the McMartin preschool. The longest and most expensive trial in American history ended with no convictions, not one. Years of investigations, dozens of charges, all based on coach testimony, false memories, and no physical evidence. In fact, one of the original prosecutors admitted publicly, we were swept up in a hysteria. Similar cases in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas and other states fell apart the same way. Innocent people had spent years in prison based on lies, fear, and spiritual paranoia. Does it sound like Salem yet? And in the music world, bands like Slayer, Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne they just kept making albums and the lawsuits claiming backmasking caused suicide were thrown out. There was never proof of Satanic intent, only performance, imagery and fictional storytelling.

1:03:26 The panic collapsed under the weight of its own exaggerations. It wasn't Satan that had infiltrated the culture. It was fear, and fear had corrupted the truth. And one of the most powerful, one of the most influential stories of them all, was told by a man named Mike Warnkey, the Satan Sellar, The lie that sold fear to the Church was nineteen seventy two, The Satan Seller hit Christian bookstores like a bomb. Sh It told the shocking testimony of Mike Warke, a former high priest of Satan turned born again Christian. Now I did not discover Mike Warkey into the nineteen eighties.

1:04:10 I was driving in my car listening to focus on the family as a teenager, and they had Mike Warnkey tell his story, and I was like, Oh, I got to get a copy of this book. He claimed he ran a cult of one thy five hundred people. He claimed he participated in human sacrifices and orgies. He claimed he used black magic to manipulate people and events, and he escaped only by the grace of Jesus Christ. Had everything a sensational conversion story. It had everything a sensational conversion story needed, darkness, salvation, drama, repentance, and best of all, for pastors and parents, it confirmed all their worst fears. If you wanted proof that Satan was recruiting teenagers, Mike Warkey had lived it, and he had and he lived to warn the church. Warkey didn't just write a book.

1:04:56 He built a career. He toured the country, became a best selling author. He was funny, charismatic, and terrifying all at once. He can make you laugh about demons and then cry about the blood rituals he supposedly witnessed. Churches embraced him, Christian media promoted him. His testimony was used in youth rallies, cassette tapes, sermon illustrations, even in Christian educational material about the occult. Warki became the face of the Satanic panic before it even had a name. But then, I'll never forget what happened in the nineteen nineties Cornerstone Magazine. I'll never forget this. Oh, I'll never forget this because I was all into Mike Warkas, saw him perform multiple times, probably fifteen times, listen to his albums. I'd read The Satan Cellar fifteen times because I was like, oh, maybe there's something. I mean, Mike Quarky's told me the story this is God to be true. I bought into it.

1:05:58 But in nineteen ninety one, Cornerstone Magazine, a Christian publication with ties to the Jesus People, published a multi part expose. They interviewed over one hundred people from Warki's past, pulled school records, checked timelines. What did they find It was devastating, and it was irrefutable. Mike Warky was never in a Satanic cult. His claims didn't match any known facts. During the time he said he was performing rituals and commending followers. He was a clean cut, slightly nerdy Bible college student. The story had been fabricated from beginning to end, and suddenly the man who had helped launch the Satanic Panic was exposed as a fraud. The book that shaped an entire movement was a lie. The conferences built on fiction, The fear was manufactured. You think that would end that, You think that would be the end of the panic, And in some ways it was. By the mid nineteen nineties, the public had grown skeptical. The false daycare cases had unraveled, lawsuits against metal bands were dismissed, and now one of the Christian world's most trusted experts had been caught red handed.

1:07:08 But here's the most tragic part. Most churches didn't apologize, Most pastors didn't bother to correct the record, and most youth ministries didn't revisit what they'd taught. They just moved on, just like in Salem in sixteen ninety three. No repentance, just silence. Now, maybe you were a teenager when all this was happening. Maybe you loved music the way it made you feel, the way it helped you survive, And maybe you were told that your music was evil, that your favorite band was satanic, and that your headphones was going to drag you straight to hell. You didn't feel like a Satanist, you felt misunderstood, And now decades later, you see it clearly. The people who claim to speak truth were spreading fear. The people who warned you about deception were deceived themselves. Because fear is powerful, and when Christians stopped thinking, they start panicking and place their trust in dramatic stories instead of verified truth. They don't guard people from evil, they become the ones who bear false witness.

1:08:13 The irony is sharp. If Satan had a strategy during the nineteen eighties and nineties, it wasn't Slayer, it wasn't Dungeon and Dragons, it wasn't back mass lyrics. It was this, Let Christians panic, let them lie in his name, let them burn records and imprison the innocent. Let them sell best sellers full of fiction and call it testimony. Because nothing discredits truth like religious people who lie for God. Here's the part that still haunts us. When the trials ended, when the false accusations were exposed, when it became clear that no underground Satanic cult was ever found, most churches never apologize. There was no public confessions, no sermons on bearing false witness, no youth group sessions about the importance of discernment over his systeria. The panic simply faded, and the people who had banned the flames moved on to the next culture war. But the damage it stayed. The church lost credibility and the eyes of a generation that saw it panic, lie, and exaggerate. The church lost trust from young people who were told Slayer would turn them into Satanists, only to discover the lyrics for horror fiction.

1:09:24 It lost influence because in choosing fear over truth, the church made itself irrelevant to real conversations about art, culture and evil. And worst of all, it became just like Salem. In both cases, the panic ended with quiet shame, not public repentance, just silence. The flames burned hot, then left a cold empty space. What Salem and the Satanic Panic reveal is this, when fear becomes the engine of religion, When panic became the language of truth. When bearing false witness is justified in the name of spiritual warfare, the result is always the same. Innocence suffer, truth is distorted, and the Gospel is overshadowed by fire and noise. The panic never really ends because we always have a new panic and a new fear. Whether it's this, whether it's the Illuminati, whether it's this, whether it's this, there's always something. See.

1:10:38 The Satanic panic didn't just harm the accused. That harmed the Church's ability to speak into culture. It showed the world that Christians often fear what they don't understand, and instead of learning, they just burn and Salem the devil was invisible, but people believed they saw him anyway. In nineteen eighty five, he wore denim, played guitar, and screamed from a vinyl record, and people burned him in church parking lots. Two different centuries, two very different fears, but one unmistakable pattern. Christians, fearing the devil become willing to lie in the name of God, and in doing so they lost something far more dangerous than a soul to heavy metal. They lost credibility, truthfulness, and discernment. The Salem Witch Trials and the Satanic Panic are not just similar their mirrors. Both began with real concerns spiritual corruption, the welfare children, and the desire to God to guard morality.

1:11:43 But in both cases the response was shaped not by scripture but by fear and Salem's spectral evidence, superstition, false confession, and the eighties backmasking, urban legends and media fueled hysteria, and both were powered by the same false assumption that panic is a form of dis government. Hell Awaits was never a theological threat. It was horror fiction told that a high volume and a genre designed to provoke people. Salem Slayer never claimed to be Satanists, their lyrics never invited worship. They depicted torment, judgment in hell as horror. The most grotesque character on the album he ends up in Hell condemned. But the Church never asked and never analyzed.

1:12:26 It assumed and attacked, and in so doing it only misunderstood the music, misunder and not only misunderstood the music, it misunderstood its mission when the Satanic Panic revealed. What the sat Satanic Panic revealed was this, the Church had taught people what to fear, but not how to think. It trained its youth to identify the devil and guitars, drum beats, and album art, and never taught them to discern between story and ideology, between depiction and endorsement, between artistic darkness and actual evil. Instead of building a generation of thinkers, the church built a generation of reactors. And when the panic passed, so did their trust. Because when the lies were exposed, the damage was done not to the devil but to the Gospel's credibility and a skeptical world.

1:13:21 What if the Church, instead of condemning Slayer from a pulpit, had said, let's open the lyrics. Let's talk about what hell means in scripture and in culture. Let's talk about depravity, horror, judgment, and the reality of spiritual darkness. Let's use this album not as a threat but as a tool for reflection. Would the Church of lost fewer young people. Would we have engaged culture instead of reacting from it. Would we have modeled truth instead of fueling fear. We can't change nineteen eighty five, but we can change how we engage the world now and Salem, the devil didn't need to actually appear. The panic did the work for him, and they Satanic panic. The devil didn't have to invade the church.

1:14:05 Christians burn the truth themselves, and hell awaits. It was just a record, just a story, just a mirror, and we shattered it because we were afraid to see ourselves. From Salem to Slayer, from accusation to hysteria, from bonfires to silence. The lesson remains, truth matters, Fear deceives, and if we don't learn to think, we will keep repeating the panic again and again and again. That's the story of Salem, They Satanic panic, and Hell awaits. An album by Slayer Tomorrow is the fortieth year anniversary that really captures in a moment, the Satanic panic of the nineteen eighties.

1:15:11 Thanks for listening, God bless