Dave Mustane, New World Order, The Dark Side

SpiralDrift posted...

Yeah, didn't Mustaine even say he sold his soul to the devil? He also appeared in an anti-gun propaganda PSA, IIRC.

Well, this is part of an excerpt from an interview he did with Metal Underground -

"I've never believed in singing about Satan and thinking he's cool, because he's not. When I was 15, I got into witchcraft and black magic, so I've known for over 30 years the power of the dark side, and it took me forever to break those chains. There's no cool way to sing about Satan — you look like a punk. 

For example, you know MERCYFUL FATE is one of my favorite musical groups, but the lyrics, to me, I can't get behind them. I don't mean to shame them — it's just not my bag. As far as me playing with bands like that, I started thinking, "You know what, Dave? You're a headliner. If you don't wanna play with people that make you uncomfortable, you don't have to." 

Especially if they're singing about the confessed enemy of someone you believe in… I mean, what idiot gets onstage with their confessed enemy? That'd be like two hip-hop guys who wanna kill each other going out together."

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"...and as far as the Satanic stuff, I've been there, done that and I found it kind of wanting. You can be so much heavier with stuff like a nuclear bomb than a pentagram. I mean, what's scarier: VX gas or an upside-down cross?"

So, people can make of that what they want, I guess.

With Danzig the imagery is at least kind of "acceptable" given the B-movie horror themes of his past bands. It was to evoke specific imagery and feelings with an artistic purpose, not just placed there as a tag or something (though he did start taking it too seriously later on).

I used to buy his extremely heavy pornographic comic book line, Verotik back in the day, and it was as blatant as you get with going over the top for everything. It's like some people keep saying that, ok, some guys in the music industry keep toting the Satanic imagery because it's a kind of inside gag, in that they don't even really believe it themselves, or are into it, but it's just for "show", a "performance", similar supposedly to how the Beatles used to include backwards messages as a direct mockery to people who already had superstitions and conspiracy theories, and they ran with that as a gag.

But the thing is that despite the imagery, plenty of them are legit into it, and the rest that comes along with it, and no line is drawn once they start. Back to a relevant quote from the same Mustaine interview, in this case the interviewer says -

"My point was that I think some of these bands are full of [crap] — that you shouldn't be as concerned about their beliefs, because for some of them, it's an act. And even real Satanists don't spend very much time hating God."

I think, along those lines, that a lot of kids who get into it, and happen to go into the metal and rock scene, merely think that wearing a pentagram or an inverted cross is just another form of being trendy and cool, being a part of a specific imagery that they think is rebellious against the supposed prudes they grew up around, and the shackling religious lives they feel were imposed on them, so they expand that to thinking that for them, these symbols are just like the classic middle finger thrown out, and it's a screw you to the families, and government they think are restrictive.

Then, later on, they continue with that further, and just add to the cliche, just to add to it, but that's only in some cases, since there are the many others, who know exactly what it means, and who is behind it, concerning the individuals who promote it, who are legit into witchcraft and seances and all the rest.