LOGICAL FALLACIES OF CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE ABOUT HEAVY METAL MUSIC AND BANDS (PART 1)

  Today, I will be talking about logical mistakes that Christians make when they make their ultimate judgement about our beloved heavy metal music. That it is satanic just by looking at its lyrical content and imagery. I will present the fallacies from the previous book that I reviewed, written by Krunoslav Žažar. His perspective can be generalized so it is most probable that you can encounter someone with a rock hard christian perspective about heavy metal (and most probably you already have in real life or the internet). Ultimately, I haven`t found any logical mistakes concerning NS bands like Grand Belial´s Key or Infernum. NOTA BENE!!- I will not write about Christian fallacies in general. Only if they are related to heavy metal.

  FALLACY #1: The author states in his book that his motivation for writing the book were disasters like wars, earthquakes and says that one should ask himself, do we live in the last of our times aka The Armageddon (found in The Book of Revelation). In the next part, immediately after the motivation statement, he writes about how there were a vast number of satanic heavy metal concerts in Zagreb in the past 10 years. Judging by his Christian perspective he is probably implying that these kind of concerts are a disaster and a sign of a oncoming Armageddon. Saying that satanic heavy metal concerts are a sign of endtimes and a disaster equal to those like war and earthquakes or floods is nonsense. Natural disasters happened in prehistoric times, our times and they will happen in the future and we cannot avoid it. Grand diseases like the black plague also occurred more than once in our history and wars are a product of greed for material or other gains. Judging by his statement, if it was true, then heavy metal bands would exist from the beginning of times (wouldn´t that be epic!!).

  FALLACY#2: SATANIC HEAVY METAL CONCERTS LEAVE FATAL CONSEQUENCES FOR ALL HUMAN LIFE.
 
This statement could be understood in two ways. First one, “for all human life” one could understand that it leaves fatal consequences for all humanity. Second one, the other explanation for “for all human life” is the whole life of a one human being. Attending such concerts or listening to such music and having fatal consequences afterwords is again bunch of nonsense and it is not scientifically or empirically proven. Here I can speak from my own experience, that listening to satanic metal or generally heavy metal genres only improved my way of thought and also enhanced my imagination and seeing things from other perspectives. On the other hand when one speaks of satanism, not everyone thinks of “Satan” in the same way. In other words, Satan could be an expression only for death or only for the devil or only for an enemy. It doesn´t necessarily need to be only one way of Satan´s embodiment.

FALLACY #3: THOSE WHO CHOOSE JESUS CHRIST ARE ALREADY WINNERS

  This statement could imply that those who listen to heavy metal music or attend concerts that have satanic imagery are already losers. Just for the sake of this fallacy, the definition of loser follows: “A person that loses or has something to lose, especially a game or contest”. A concert or music isn´t something that you lose. It can only elevate you and your mind. Also, concerts and music or not contests (although they could be, between bands, but thats for another time). Basically what he is saying, Christianity is a two-way game in which you can choose rightly or wrongly. The mythic battle between ultimate good and ultimate evil which doesn´t actually exist in real world.

FALLACY #4: PEOPLE WHO PLAY HEAVY METAL MUSIC “GET THEIR BREAD WITHOUT ACTUALLY WORKING”
 
He states in his book that one of The Devil´s seducements is getting food without actually working. He didn´t put his definition of work in the book but here is the textbook definition: “Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result”. Learning and playing instruments takes a lot of skill and training, especially on stage because you need to be extra concretated, fearless and skillful. It takes work, a lot of work for that, hence I disagree with him concerning this statement.

INQUISITOR´S MANUAL FOR HEAVY METAL BANDS (book review)

Today, I will be reviewing a book called “Heavy metal in the service of satanism” by Krunoslav Žažar. It has a total of 111 pages and it is really easy to read. In this book, the author made a list of bands which are satanic or have satanic lyrics in their songs. The book is written in Croatian so I will translate quotations to English.
It is stated that the author of the book is a member of the Franciscan order and  Mary´s Legion.

  In the introduction of the book, the author says that he started writing the book inspired by the events of today’s world which affect all of us. The awful things that happen like wars, earthquakes or any other events that evaporate human lives out of existence. He says that in Zagreb (the capital city of Croatia), in the last 10 years, a vast number of heavy metal concerts were held in which heavy metal bands were satanic.

His proof in the introduction are posters that contain satanic symbols like pentagrams, inverted crosses and the number of The Beast.
I will now quote his opinion (translated):

“One should ask himself whose children will attend such concerts and what kind of content will be served (to the children), when we know that that are extremely dangerous things which have lifetime consequences, especially for the human salvation brought to us by Lord Jesus Christ.”[1]
 
You can already tell by his words in the introduction that the book will be based on his Christocentric perspective against mainly satanic metal bands or metal bands that are satanic at least by their content. His goal is to give an analysis of the bands and their lyrics that he found on the Internet.
  Later on, he quotes St.Paul and writes some fundamental Christian truths and states that metalheads have been corrupted by the devil:

“That is one of the devil´s seducements, that a man in his life gets a loaf of bread without working. From the examples, we will see that many young people choose to play heavy metal music for that particular reason, and they make quite a living from it.“[2]

In the last pages of the introduction, from an x number of examples, he says that he will prove that metalheads have bowed down to Satan in the way how they dress, how they behave, what they say, by the content of their lyrics and the style of their music. He also says that in this book he wants to make a list of the satanic metal bands because there are bands that are not satanic and/or not anti-christian.

  The main part of his book is written in the following way: He is listing the bands alphabetically and describes them (to which subgenre of heavy metal they belong and who are the members of the band). Then he puts pictures of band members and the cover art of their albums. He is also listing names of the albums and songs which are satanic and/or anti-christian. Before the end of the analysis of the band’s content, he takes out the lyrics from one of their songs and translates it to Croatian. The goal of this analysis is to prove that these bands are satanic just by their lyrics and satanic imagery on their albums covers. In other words, if your lyrics or content are satanic, then you are a Satanist (of course, this is a logical fallacy, which there are many of in this book; I will explain those logical fallacies in an another post later on):

  “These words (the song lyrics) and the words from their (band „Acheron“) other songs prove that they are Satanists and that they attend black masses or similar rituals. That is a path that certainly leads to damnation. Listening to this kind of songs and buying this kind of albums is also a heavy sin and other examples from this book will show that the people who have started worshiping Satan by listening music have become worse and worse, so they do the most despicable things nowadays.”[3]

    The author makes the same or similar conclusions with other bands because belief in God is the ultimate truth, and worshiping Satan is ultimate blasphemy. He sent emails stating his opinion about the bands and even got replies to them.

  I will now present the list of bands that he analyzed: Acheron, Angelcorpse, Apostasy, Averse Sefira, Bathory, Behemoth, Belphegor, Blasphemy, Blood, Burzum, Dark Funeral, Darkthrone, Demoncy, Dissection, Dimmu Borgir, Emperor, Enthroned, Evilwar, Gates of Enoch, Gorgoroth, Grand Belial´s Key, Havohej, Hellhammer, Immortal, Impaled Nazarene, Infernum, Inquisition, Krieg, Marduk, Marilyn Manson, Mayhem, Mutilation, Necromantia, Ozzy Osbourne, Profanatica, Resuscitator, Rotting Christ, Satanic Slaughter, Satyricon, Setherial, Slayer and Watain.

  To conclude his analysis, he states that a great number of murders, ritual suicides, church burnings, swearing, blasphemy, and sexual perversion are all consequences from worshiping Satan and bowing down to demons.[4]

  To conclude, this is a book written from a person who has an extremely Christian view over satanic heavy metal bands. In his conclusions of the bands, he makes a vast number of logical fallacies because of his mainly Christian perspective that repeats over and over again. I will address these logical fallacies in my next post, „Logical fallacies of the Christian perspective about heavy metal music and bands“. This book is basically a form of ostracism and inquisition against heavy metal bands that have satanic lyrics and imagery (although they don’t necessarily have to be satanic, neither do the members have to be Satanists).

                                                                                    Salute! – The Mage


[1] Žažar, page 3

[2] Žažar, page 7

[3] Žažar, page 13

[4] Žažar, page 110

Heavy metal music, philosophy and history all combined in 1 place

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