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Serial Killing in Music
A casual glance at our media landscape will reveal that our modern, post-Internet society has a fascination with the macabre and an obsession with unusual and unexplainable events in history. Everything from gruesome cold cases to the disturbed exploits of well known serial killers are fodder for our ravenous media consumption. Between real-crime media fans and conspiracy theorists there's an almost rubber-necking fascination with the deadly and half-forgotten pieces of history whose eerie nature or unsolved status haunt the present day.
In my typical fashion, I'd like to turn the conversation towards music: how artists have been inspired by, adapted, or otherwise taken influence from all things tragically mysterious or disturbing from bygone eras. In this first article I'll be covering the influence of serial killers in music, especially heavy metal. Catch me next week talking about horrific historical events like the Dyatlov Pass Incident and the music inspired by it.
Serial Killers in Metal
It surely doesn't surprise you that metal music has a particular fascination with these sorts of topics. There are entire subgenres whose lyrics exist almost entirely within this space: from Death Metal's gorey and in-your-face brutality to Black Metal's constantly-professed satanism. I'm a little more interested in the music which goes a bit more specific than describing violent acts directly.
For example, there is Seattle's Green River, formed in 1984 by future Mudhoney members Steve Turner and Mark Arm and future Pearl Jam members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament. The band's first EP Come On Down (1985) is widely considered the very first proper grunge release. The band were named for the regions' infamous Green River Killer, who wouldn't be apprehended until 2001 when he was charged with the murders of 48 women, occurring mostly between 1982 and 1985. Lyrically and thematically the band are rooted in the gloom and punk-spirit which would define the genre when it exploded in the early 1990's. Vocalist Mark Arm and guitarist Steve Turner chose the name primarily for its shock value and as a nod to the 1971 Creedence Clearwater Revival song of the same name.
Similarly, there's the Swedish 1st Wave Black Metal band Bathory, named for Elizabeth Báthory, a Hungarian noblewoman from the 16th century who (alongside several of her servants) was imprisoned for the torture and murder of more than 80 girls and women. Báthory also served as one of the key historical influences for modern vampires, alongside Vlad the Impaler. A key influence behind band-leader Quorthon's decision to choose the name was the 1982 track "Countess Bathory" from Venom's iconic Black Metal-- a massive musical influence to Bathory as well.
Among the bands most closely tied to the topic of serial killers, are New Orleans sludge metal legends Acid Bath, whose frequent lyrical references to murder, rape, and necrophilia went much darker than even most groups in the initial waves of Death Metal. The band took a particular interest in John Wayne Gacy, using his self-portrait for the cover of their 1994 debut When the Kite String Pops.
Japanese doom-metallers Church of Misery might take the cake with their 2001 debut album composed almost entirely of tracks based and named after a litany of American serial killers, including: Edmund Kemper, Peter Sutcliffe, Herbert Mullin, John Wayne Gacy, and the afore-mentioned Green River Killer Gary Ridgeway.
In a similar fashion, the grindcore act Macabre dedicated their third studio album, released in 2000, to an exploration into its namesake: Dahmer. This record takes the idea less seriously than Acid Bath or Church of Misery, truly assuming the role of a gimmick release.
And I could keep going on and on with examples from across the spectrum of metal. Is there anything we can learn from these examples? Probably not. A focus on serial killers is just one avenue of many in the eternal arms-race that is heavy metal, where bands will push their music, their visuals, or their lyrics to whatever extreme they can reach in an effort to climb a mountain of heaviness and edginess which gets taller year-by-year.
Outside Metal
Moving away from metal adjacent music, the presence or influence of serial killers in music gets less common and reduces in scope. Artists like Swans, The Cure, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Sufjan Stevens have all based individual songs on notable serial killers from the US and the UK.
A major exception is the 1996 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds record Murder Ballads, an album dedicated to and thematically surrounding real acts of murder. The album isn't as specific or pointed with its references as the likes of Church of Misery or Macabre, but the album engages with the taboo in a more unique way. The album title derives from murder ballads, a traditional song form that (no shock here) centers on narratives of violent crime and murder. Murder Ballads consists both of Nick Cave's versions of traditional murder ballads as well as his own original tracks written in the style.
Paul Taylor - Web Content Director
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