Metal

The sound hit first. Always did. That hard chug. The drums, a steady hammer. Guitar, a sharp edge. Metal. They heard it. They flinched. Or they nodded.

It came with images. Always did. Black shirts. Long hair. A symbol on an album. Some inverted thing. A star with points. Instant. Like a fist to the gut. Satan. They said it. Satanism. Devil worship. They closed the book.

But the book wasn’t closed. Never was.

Roots

Think of the start. Black Sabbath. Early days. Ozzy, a pale face, singing. Not about the devil. Not really. About pigs of war. About men of iron. Heavy things. Dark. Yes. But it was the darkness of the world. Not the pit. It was rebellion. A loud “No.” To the sweet, the soft.

Panic

Then came the eighties. A bad time for understanding. The “Satanic Panic.” Fear was a thick fog. Every long hair, every game, every song, it was all linked. A cult. A hidden evil. They saw the covers. Demons. Fire. Proof. They didn’t hear the words. Battles. Old stories. Hard feelings. They saw the hand. The horns. Dio. He explained it. Old country sign. To ward off evil. Not to summon it. A sign of power. Of the music’s force. But they saw the devil. And it stuck. It stuck hard.

Blacken

Later, yes. Some bands. The extreme ones. A small, dark corner. They took the dark path. Anti-Christian. Some Satanic. To shock. To push. To break things. And when news came, of fires, of madness, it was them. They were the easy story. “See!” the headlines screamed. “We told you! All Satan!” And the small, dark corner became the whole. Unfair. But simple. And fear likes simple.

Meaning

But what is it, truly? For most. For the many. It is power. It is speed. It is release. A place for anger. For sadness. For the hard truth of things. A community. Hard men, strong women. They found their place.

The music is precise. Fast. Hard to play. Not just noise. There is skill. There is thought. It is a loud art.

When they sing of evil, it is often not real evil. It is the evil in men. The rot of power. The fight against what is wrong. It is a story told. A play performed. Like a man writing a dark book. He is not the killer. He tells the story of the killer. It is the same. It is art. It is a punch. Not a prayer.

when the sound comes. The heavy crash. And you see the hand rise. Do not think of old lies. Think of the noise. The force. The song. It is not the devil’s sound. It is the sound of life. Hard. Loud. And that is all.