Judas Priest
Heavy metal

[2005] Interview with Wilson Bryan Key This one particular album, [Judas Priest’s] Stained Class, which was the subject of the case – these boys had listened to it and committed suicide. Six hours, over and over and over again. They knew the words, they knew everything about it. Then they took the shotgun and went down to the churchyard. One blew his head off.....So [the attorneys] gave me a record [Stained Class] and I took it home. Wow! There was all kinds of stuff hidden in that thing! The theme of this whole genre of music was suicide… We took the lyrics and transcribed them – I don’t think they’d ever been transcribed – and began to analyse them: ‘who’s talking to who about what?’.....
   
Well, [Better by You, Better than Me] was inducement to suicide … The total content of that thing was subliminal. I analysed the lyrics. What does it mean? OK, it’s a young man, talking to Satan, his god, asking Satan to talk to his mother and tell her what a noble thing his life had been, how good he was. Because he was going to kill himself. Now, it’s there. It’s not a conjecture, or an opinion thing. I mean, you can cite that out of the lyrics. …
   
Then [there were the] embeds: I found that one voice that was put in, I did a spectroscopic analysis of it, it was Halford the lead singer and in between the phrasing, the singer takes a breath and in between the phrasing they put ‘Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!’ at increasing levels in the stereo. Now, that was dubbed in after the thing was made.


Stained Glass


Satanic hand sign (music)


Poseidon