Straight to Hell: unmasking the most abhorrent acts in music

Josh Parsons

Music Editor

Don’t you just love Halloween? It’s the only time of year when we can live out our sickest fantasies without friends thinking we’re the next Jeffery Dahmer.

Admit it: sometimes we lust to connect with that animalistic realm that breathes just below the surface of our sterilized society, and Halloween gives us just that fix.

In celebration of the holidays, I felt obliged to muse for a moment on some of the most disagreeable, disgusting, foul-smelling musicians that have clawed across the surface of the planet over the past few decades.

Forget that Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson stage theatre crap. These musicians are the real deal when it comes to being insane.

I couldn’t start with anyone other than the greatest degenerate in rock ‘n’ roll history, GG Allin, primarily because Halloween was such an important day for him. It was, of course, the day he had planned to off himself by wedging a stick of dynamite in his ass while performing and then proceeding to stage dive. Unfortunately (actually, fortunately), a premature heroin overdose in 1994 erased the possibility of this.

GG Allin functioned as the figurehead for a sort of punk-rock cult that had membership coast to coast in America. Legions of freaks flocked to his shows, just to watch a drugged-up Allin strip naked, mutilate himself and roll in his own feces, all while moving through the audience and physically attacking onlookers. God Bless America.

The world of hip-hop also has a plethora of disturbed individuals to offer up. Take, for example, gangsta rapper Big Lurch. In 2004, Big Lurch pulled an all-nighter smoking PCP with some buddies. Police arrested him the next morning, bloody and yelling at the sky, after finding his girlfriend dead, with her chest sliced open and bite marks on her face and lungs.

Outside of America, you need not look further than the nightmarish land of Norway, where some of the most off-putting artists have reached demi-god status. In the early ‘80s, kids started hanging around a record store aptly titled Hell, setting the groundwork for the Scandinavian Black Metal scene. Within months, youth across Oslo were painting their faces, reading the Satanic Bible and burning down any church they could find.

The essence Scandinavian Black Metal is personified in each member of Meyhem, a band famous for pouring lamb’s blood on their fans. In 1991 vocalist Dead, who reportedly was convinced that he was not human but some possessed semi-demon creature, took a shotgun to his own head. A band member found him, snapped a Polaroid and decided to use it for the band’s cover of the their next album.

As a heartwarming gesture, the remaining members of the band collected fragments of his skull and were, for some twisted reason, inspired to make necklaces of them. To this day, they wear them proudly and even occasionally distribute them to a select cult of musicians they deem worthy.

So stop worrying about whether or not your costume may be pushing the boundaries in terms of gore; I say buy that second tube of fake blood. When else will you get the chance? Remember, there will always be someone more disrturbed than you.