{"id":4376,"date":"2025-02-21T10:10:17","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T09:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/?p=4376"},"modified":"2025-06-13T10:16:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T08:16:40","slug":"mdwp010-005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/mdwp010-005\/","title":{"rendered":"Songs in the Key of Depression, Suicide and Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"subtitle\">Or How Metal Musicians Sustained a Dialogue of Community with Their\u00a0Fans in\u00a0a\u00a0Period of\u00a0Moral\u00a0Panic about Heavy\u00a0Metal\u00a0Music<\/h2>\n<h3 class=\"author\"><em>Andy R. Brown<\/em><\/h3>\n<p><head><\/p>\n<style>\n        .tsquotation strong {\n            font-weight: bold;\n        }\n        .tsquotation em {\n            font-style: italic !important;\n        }\n        .bibliography {\n            margin-top: -1em !important;\n            padding-left: 22px;\n            text-indent: -22px;\n        }\n        figure {\n            margin: 0;\n        }\n* {\n  box-sizing: border-box;\n}\n.row {\n  display: flex;\n    gap: 10px;\nalign-items: baseline;\n      margin-bottom: 10px;\n    }\n    .row:last-child {\n      margin-bottom: 0;\n}\n    .column img {\n      height: auto;\n      max-height: 417px;\n      max-width: 660px;\n    }\n.column-50 {\n  flex: 50;\n}\n    .column-50 img {\n      max-height: 400px;\n      width: auto;\n    }\n    <\/style>\n<p><\/head><br \/>\n<div class=\"one_half\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span class='bdaia-btns bdaia-btn-medium' style=\"background:#b2b2b2 !important;color:#000000 !important;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/mdwp010-004\/\" style=\"color:#000000 !important;\">&#129028;<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"one_half last\">\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><span class='bdaia-btns bdaia-btn-medium' style=\"background:#b2b2b2 !important;color:#000000 !important;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/mdwp010-006\" style=\"color:#000000 !important;\">&#129030;<\/a><\/span><\/div><div class=\"clear-fix\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"bdaia-toggle close\"><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-open\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-up\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">Zitieren<\/span><\/h4><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-close\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-down\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">Zitieren<\/span><\/h4><div class=\"toggle-content\"><p>\nBrown, Andy R. 2025. \u00bbSongs in the Key of Depression, Suicide and Death: Or How Metal Musicians Sustained a Dialogue of Community with Their Fans in a Period of Moral Panic about Heavy Metal Music\u00ab. In <i>Musik und Suizidalit\u00e4t. Interdisziplin\u00e4re Perspektiven<\/i>, hg. von Julia Heimerdinger, Hannah Riedl und Thomas Stegemann. Wien und Bielefeld: mdwPress. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9783839474280-005\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9783839474280-005<\/a>.<br \/>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"bdaia-toggle close\"><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-open\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-up\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">Abstract (en)<\/span><\/h4><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-close\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-down\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">Abstract (en)<\/span><\/h4><div class=\"toggle-content\"><p>\nThis paper takes a fresh look at the 1980s moral panic against heavy metal music, which was blamed by US elites for a spike in teen suicide rates, and contrasts it with a \u00bbfailed\u00ab panic in which the mostly (middle class) female fans of the EMO genre were able to successfully contest their stigmatization as a \u00bbsuicide cult\u00ab by the UK right-wing tabloid <em>Daily Mail<\/em> in 2008. Drawing on contemporary moral panic theory, this study revises the view that the mostly \u00bbblue collar\u00ab fans who became the victims of the US panic lacked a collective voice of resistance. It reexamines the hitherto unacknowledged prevalence of thrash metal \u00bbsuicide note\u00ab songs, such as Metallica\u2019s \u00bbFade To Black\u00ab, which promoted a dialogic conversation between metal bands and their fans that enabled them to \u00bblive through\u00ab economically difficult and politically distorted times.<br \/>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"bdaia-toggle close\"><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-open\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-up\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">\u00dcbersicht<\/span><\/h4><h4 class=\"bdaia-toggle-head toggle-head-close\"><span class=\"bdaia-sio bdaia-sio-angle-down\"><\/span><span class=\"txt\">\u00dcbersicht<\/span><\/h4><div class=\"toggle-content\"><p>\n<a href=\"#1\">Introduction<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#2\">Part One<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#3\">Part Two<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#4\">Conclusion<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#5\">References<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"#6\">Figures<\/a><br \/>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<hr>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><span class='bdaia-btns bdaia-btn-medium' style=\"background:#b2b2b2 !important;color:#000000 !important;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/10.1515_9783839474280-005.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" style=\"color:#000000 !important;\">CHAPTER PDF <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/download-1459070_1280.png\" style=\"vertical-align: middle\" alt=\"Download-Logo\" width=\"17\" height=\"17\"><\/a><\/span>\n<h4 id=\"1\">Introduction<\/h4>\n<p>With the partial exception of \u00bbSuicide Solution\u00ab (Ozzy Osbourne 1980), a song about drinking yourself into an early grave, none of the songs cited in the US Senate hearing (19\u00a0September 1985) on the \u00bbLabelling of Rock Music\u00ab, and in legal proceedings thereafter, concerned with linking the popularity of heavy metal with an increase in youth suicide rates, are <em>actually<\/em> about suicide. This did not prevent Republican party affiliated groups, such as the Parents Music Resource Center (the PMRC; the so-called \u00bbWashington wives\u00ab, see below), aided by a phalanx of academic \u00bbexperts\u00ab, from conveying the opposite impression, often via the deployment of sensationalist tactics aimed at the media and the wider public. Indeed, this period can be characterized as one in which several professional groups, including teachers, lawyers, social workers, psychiatrists, and academic psychologists, claimed and sought (or simply assumed) evidence of a \u00bbcausal\u00ab link between the popularity of heavy metal music with \u00bbblue-collar\u00ab youth and an alarming rise in suicide rates in North America. Osbourne\u2019s song, for example, was twice cited in separate legal indictments linking it to male youth suicides, while Judas Priest\u2019s cover of Spooky Tooth\u2019s \u00bbBetter by You, Better than Me\u00ab (1978) was claimed, in what one would have to describe as a \u00bbshow trial\u00ab, held in Reno, Nevada, from 6\u00a0July to 24\u00a0August 1990, to carry a \u00bbbackmasked\u00ab message (\u00bbDo it, do it\u00ab) that drove two young men to act out a suicide pact. After the \u00bbnot guilty\u00ab verdict, the band\u2019s lead singer, Rob Halford, was quoted in <em>Billboard<\/em> as saying:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"tsquotation\">It tore us up emotionally hearing someone say to the judge\u00a0[\u2026] that this is a band that creates music that kills young people\u00a0[\u2026] We accept that some people don\u2019t like heavy metal, but we can\u2019t let them convince us that it\u2019s negative and destructive. Heavy metal is a friend that gives people great pleasure and enjoyment and helps them through hard times. (Quoted in Bessman 1990, 46 and 52)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Despite the political rhetoric, pseudo-science and ideological attacks that dominate this extraordinary period of politically sanctioned moral panic, and seemingly at odds with the mission statement of metal scholars Deena Weinstein (1991) and Robert Walser (1993) to defend the genre from these unwarranted and seemingly baseless accusations, I want to argue that heavy metal music in this period <em>did<\/em> feature a number of songs that address mental illness, depression and suicide, including, for example, Metallica\u2019s \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab (1984) and \u00bbWelcome Home (Sanitarium)\u00ab (1986), Megadeth\u2019s \u00bbIn My Darkest Hour\u00ab (1988), and \u00bbA Tout le Monde\u00ab (1994), and Suicidal Tendencies\u2019 \u00bbInstitutionalized\u00ab and \u00bbSuicidal Failure\u00ab (both 1983). But discovering the existence of these songs\u00a0\u2014 one of which <em>is<\/em> mentioned in the US Senate hearing, as I will show\u00a0\u2014 does not <em>retrospectively<\/em> prove the case of the political elite. Rather, the existence of such songs should be viewed as evidence of a musical commentary on the dire economic situation that the majority of working-class youth were facing and trying to <em>live<\/em> through. For example, the band Suicidal Tendencies, both in their name and in their music and lyrics, offers a satirical, confused and often angry first-person narrator commentary on the plight of the troubled characters depicted in their songs and the situations they find themselves in.<\/p>\n<p>In the first part of my paper, I focus on moral panic theory and its recent revision and critique by contemporary scholars, focussing on the phenomenon of a <em>failed<\/em> moral panic. I do so by drawing on a case study of the attempt by the UK right-wing newspaper, the <em>Daily Mail<\/em>, to stigmatize the newly popular genre of emo (shorthand for \u00bbemotional hardcore\u00ab) as a \u00bbsuicide cult\u00ab encouraging its fans to self-abuse and suicide so that they can join <em>The Black Parade<\/em>,<a href=\"#fn1\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref1\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>1<\/sup><\/a> the title of the 2006 album by the band My Chemical Romance (MCR), who are at the centre of the controversy. But the attempted panic is not sustained, mainly because of the impact of collective youth protests, online and in the streets, of its majority female fans, denouncing the rhetoric of the mid-market tabloid paper. I then go on to compare this failed moral panic with a successful one staged against heavy metal, involving a show trial of metal musicians and elite political proceedings, leading to the labelling of heavy metal albums as requiring \u00bbparental guidance\u00ab (see below) because of their content and leading to many of their majority blue-collar male fans being sectioned in psychiatric institutions and subject to \u00bbde-metaling\u00ab programs (Rosenbaum and Prinsky 1991).<\/p>\n<p>In the second part of my paper, I focus on the songs themselves, including Metallica\u2019s \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab and \u00bbWelcome Home (Sanitarium)\u00ab, and the MTV videos by Megadeth and Suicidal Tendencies, such as \u00bbA Tout le Monde\u00ab and \u00bbInstitutionalized\u00ab, in order to clearly demonstrate that there <em>were<\/em> songs about suicide in the period of moral panic about heavy metal and its negative impact on youth. I then take this further in suggesting that, particularly within the genre of thrash metal (see Brown 2025)\u00a0\u2014 a genre not generally associated with narratives of despair and inner turmoil, <em>even by metal scholars<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 there is clear evidence of a song type that is especially concerned with these themes, particularly suicide. Not only this but many of these songs, perhaps surprisingly, take the form musically of a ballad that is concerned with a troubled \u00bbinterior\u00ab narrative about depression, suicidal thoughts and death, or offer, in effect, a \u00bbsuicide note\u00ab (or a set of notes on suicide, such as failed attempts, etc.) to the listener. My analysis seeks to explore what is musically and lyrically distinctive about the \u00bbthrash metal ballad\u00ab <em>as a suicide note<\/em> in order to place its emergence within a wider context\u00a0\u2014 one characterized, I will argue, by a <em>dialogic<\/em> conversation between metal musicians and metal fans (conducted through music and songs) that is concerned with addressing the experience of trying to \u00bblive through\u00ab this difficult economic and politically distorted period and, in the process, is able to cohere a shared sense of community, collective identity and empathy.<\/p>\n<p>The origins of this paper derive from critical reflection on two previous studies, \u00bbSuicide Solutions?\u00ab (Brown 2011b; 2013) and \u00bbThe Ballad of Heavy Metal\u00ab (Brown 2016), where I sought not only to revise the findings of each but to draw them together in a re-examination of the role of heavy metal music in moral panics about youth suicide, particularly with respect to thrash metal songs contemplating or announcing an act of suicide.<a href=\"#fn2\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref2\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>2<\/sup><\/a> If there was a key <em>tipping point<\/em> in this re-examination, it was the \u00bbrecognition\u00ab\u00a0\u2014 first noted by Pillsbury (2006) regarding Metallica\u00a0\u2014 of the thrash metal ballad as a recurrent feature in band repertoires, that allowed a dark and melancholic first-person narrative concerned with depression, suicidal thoughts and the contemplation of death. But this aspect, seemingly hidden in plain sight, not only connected thrash to the controversial role of the sentimental \u00bbpower ballad\u00ab in heavy metal\u2019s chart success in the 1980s, but also allowed a further reclamation to be had in noting the widespread existence of the dark and contemplative ballad in the classic heavy metal music of the 1970s, such as Judas Priest\u2019s \u00bbBeyond the Realms of Death\u00ab from the <em>Stained Class<\/em> album\u00a0(1978) \u2014 the track (along with \u00bbHeroes End\u00ab) that was first indicted in the 1990 civil action brought against the band by the family of the teenager Jay Vance (who, along with his friend Ray Belknap, had <em>allegedly<\/em> entered into a \u00bbsuicide pact\u00ab after listening to it). But the other key element involved in the <em>rethinking<\/em> of the role of the ballad in heavy metal music was the discovery, made possible by reading back over the US Senate hearing documents, that the thrash metal ballad \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab by Metallica was also presented by \u00bbexpert witnesses\u00ab as evidence of songs inviting teenage suicide, despite the fact that the song was misnamed \u00bbFaith in Black\u00ab (U.S. Congress. Senate 1985, 14).<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"2\">Part One<\/h4>\n<h5>Moral Panic Theory<\/h5>\n<p>The opening paragraph of Stanley Cohen\u2019s classic text <em>Folk Devils<\/em><a href=\"#fn3\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref3\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>3<\/sup><\/a> <em>and Moral Panics<\/em> from 1972, states:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"tsquotation\">Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. (1)\u00a0A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; (2)\u00a0its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; (3)\u00a0the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; (4)\u00a0socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; (5)\u00a0ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; (6)\u00a0the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folklore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way the society conceives of itself. (Cohen quoted in Critcher 2003,\u00a09)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Thus, moral panics are cyclical \u00bbspasms\u00ab that occur in advanced industrial societies with mass media. The numbers (added by Critcher) indicate that there are six stages to a typical cycle, although Cohen resists the idea that the model is sequential or overly determined, since each stage may enable or constrain progression to the next. Nevertheless, the model indicates a key relationship between primary (professionals, accredited experts) and secondary definers (media, politicians) identifying a \u00bbsocial problem\u00ab. Deviant youth groups are labelled and \u00bbstigmatized\u00ab\u00a0\u2014 via exaggeration, distortion and symbolization (symbolic stereotypical characteristics) in news reporting cycles, leading to calls for social control\/new laws, strategies and \u00bbmeasures\u00ab\u00a0\u2014 to stamp out \u00bbevil\u00ab or \u00bbmoral decay\u00ab, etc. Moral panics typically succeed because the \u00bbknowledge\/info\u00ab gap between actual groups and parents that constitute the \u00bbmainstream\u00ab is wide. Youth groups exist before reporting, but the effect of reporting is to confer and confirm deviance and delinquency upon them.<\/p>\n<h5>Critics of Cohen\u2019s Moral Panic Theory<\/h5>\n<p>Ulf Bo\u00ebthius (1995) argues that moral panics over youth and media have become less easy to sustain because of the explosion in new media and popular cultural forms, a greater pluralism of moral and cultural values, a decline in social and political tensions between classes and a greater heterogeneity in the social composition of national populations and lifestyles. Angela McRobbie (1994) and McRobbie and Sarah\u00a0L. Thornton (2000) consistently emphasize three areas that they believe date the model: (1)\u00a0that it operates with an excessively monolithic view of the separation between elites, the media, experts and the control culture, on the one hand, and hapless deviants on the other; (2)\u00a0that youth culture is itself increasingly dependent upon and integrated into forms of media which communicate its values, perspectives and interests; (3)\u00a0that mass media forms are successful to the extent that they misrepresent the nature of folk devils and social problems to a <em>gullible and dependent audience<\/em>, when contemporary media audiences are far from this, being both <em>intelligent and active<\/em> in a changed media environment that encourages their interactivity. De Young argues that although the framework is useful, it cannot account for <em>folk devils fighting back<\/em>, divided public opinion and ambiguous resolutions that are \u00bbmore symbolic than real\u00ab (de\u00a0Young 1998, 272). While Ungar (2001) argues that accumulated knowledge about moral panics is suspect because it is based on the retrospective study of successful rather than <em>unsuccessful<\/em> or <em>failed<\/em> examples.<\/p>\n<p>Chas Critcher\u2019s timely \u00bbmakeover\u00ab of moral panic theory suggests that \u00bb[t]he folk devil is more likely to be recruited from groups who cannot speak for themselves and have nobody to speak for them\u00ab (Critcher 2003, 145). But if putative folk devils have the means to contest their demonization or find that there are a range of alternative forms of media that can do it for them, then the assertion seems undermined. Or does the idea of \u00bbempowered folk devils\u00ab depend on the social status and cultural resources of the stigmatized group itself? (de\u00a0Young 1998, 275). It was this counter-thesis I sought to test in my study, \u00bbSuicide Solutions? Or, How the Emo Class of 2008 Were Able to Contest Their Media Demonization, Whereas the Headbangers, Burnouts or \u203aChildren of Zoso\u2039 Generation Were Not\u00ab (Brown 2011b; 2013).<\/p>\n<h5>\u00bbSuicide Solutions?\u00ab Revisited<\/h5>\n<p>My comparative case study, \u00bbSuicide Solutions?\u00ab (Brown 2011b; 2013), offered analysis of two press-mediated morality scares, concerned with the influence of metal (and metal-related) music genres on incidences of teen suicide in two different periods. I characterize the attack on heavy metal as a \u00bbsuccessful\u00ab moral panic and on emo as an \u00bbunsuccessful\u00ab one. Both panics have teen suicide cases at their centre and the claim that it was their metal or emo music fandom that led them to this. The origin of the term \u00bbSuicide Solutions\u00ab is a section subheading in Robert Walser\u2019s \u00bbCan I Play with Madness\u00ab chapter (Walser 2014, 145),<a href=\"#fn4\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref4\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>4<\/sup><\/a> to which I added the question mark to allow a contrast between the heavy metal and emo scares as offering a possible suicide <em>solution<\/em> for troubled teens. The subheadings, particularly that of the \u00bbchildren of ZoSo\u00ab (which references the \u00bbLed Zeppelin\u00a0IV\u00ab album),<a href=\"#fn5\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref5\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>5<\/sup><\/a> refers to the subcultural term used by Donna Gaines in her investigative study of the teenage \u00bbburnouts\u00ab at the centre of one of several moral panics about music and suicide in 1980s North America, <em>Teenage Wasteland<\/em> (Gaines 1998, 179\u201481) (see below).<\/p>\n<p>Based on this comparison, I argued that the campaign against heavy metal during the 1984\u20141991<a href=\"#fn6\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref6\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>6<\/sup><\/a> period in the United States was an example of a <em>successful<\/em> moral panic, whereas the attempt to generate a similar scare about emo in the UK in 2008 was an example of a <em>failed<\/em> one. So why did one succeed and the other not? First, while sensationalist press coverage on behalf of \u00bbparents\u00ab characterized both panics, in the UK example, this lacked endorsement by elite\/professional bodies, so societal \u00bbsolutions\u00ab were never clearly posed. Second, the enhanced role of niche\/subcultural media, especially online, in contesting the emo panic, played a central role, particularly in enhancing the ability of emo fans to \u00bbspeak back\u00ab to their demonizers, exemplified by the march by emo fans on the offices of the mid-market newspaper the <em>Daily Mail<\/em>, which was widely reported by the broadsheet press.<a href=\"#fn7\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref7\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>7<\/sup><\/a> Finally, to the extent that emo is a middle-class defined subculture with a pronounced female profile, it was not viewed as a <em>threat<\/em> to societal norms in quite the same way as that of the masculinist, blue-collar-defined fandom of 1980s heavy metal (Brown 2011b, 19). All of which appeared to confirm Chas Critcher\u2019s view (cited above). However, while this revised study will broadly agree with this assertion, it seeks to identify and uncover the hitherto unrecognized role that heavy metal and hardcore bands played in supporting their \u00bbpolitically\u00ab stigmatized and \u00bbsocially\u00ab alienated fans via their songs and subcultural stance against what is retrospectively viewed as \u00bboppressive\u00ab and \u00bbexcessive\u00ab institutional power.<\/p>\n<h5>A Brief Overview of the \u00bbUnsuccessful\u00ab Emo Panic<\/h5>\n<p>Here is an outline of the first phase of the media coverage of the UK emo panic (Brown 2011b, 29):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Tragic Emo Teenager Uses Tie to Hang Herself. <em>Evening Standard<\/em> (London), 7\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Popular Schoolgirl Dies in \u203aEmo Suicide Cult\u2039. <em>The Daily Telegraph<\/em>, 7\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Girl, 13, Hanged Herself after Becoming Obsessed with \u203aEmo\u2039. <em>The Times<\/em>, 8\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Suicide of Hannah, 13, the Secret Emo. <em>The Sun,<\/em> 8\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Girl Hanged Herself to Impress Emo Cult. <em>The Daily Telegraph<\/em>, 8\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>20th SUICIDE IN BRIDGEND. <em>Daily Mirror<\/em>, 8\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Suicide of Girl, 13, Hooked by Cult That Glamorizes Death. <em>Daily Mail<\/em>, 8\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Hannah Was a Happy 13-Year-Old until She Became an \u203aEmo\u2039 \u2014 Part of a Sinister Teenage Craze That Romanticises Death. <em>Daily Mail<\/em>, 15\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Why No Child Is Safe from the Sinister Cult of Emo. <em>Daily Mail<\/em>, 16\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here is the second phase of the coverage (Brown 2011b, 30):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Maligned Emo Fans to March on <em>Daily Mail<\/em>. <em>The Guardian<\/em>, 22\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Reasons to Be Cheerful. <em>The Independent<\/em>, 23\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>EMO: Welcome to the Black Parade. <em>The Independent<\/em>, 23\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Mail\u2019s Chemical Reaction. <em>The Observer<\/em>, 25\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>The Kids Who March in the Black Parade. <em>The Times<\/em>, 30\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Black Parade of Teen Angst. <em>Irish Independent<\/em>, 31\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Is Emo a Suicide Cult? <em>The Guardian<\/em>, 31\u00a0May 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Emo Fans Protest at \u203aSuicide Cult\u2039 Label. <em>The Observer<\/em>, 1\u00a0June 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>SUICIDE Newspaper under Siege as Fans of Emo Music Protest at \u203aSuicide Cult\u2039 Coverage of Teenager\u2019s Death. <em>Independent on Sunday<\/em>, 1\u00a0June 2008.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What is remarkable about the second phase of the emo panic is that it is entirely unexplainable within the classic framework. The event that coheres the coverage and acts as its object and rationale is the march on the offices of the <em>Daily Mail<\/em> of \u00bb200\u00ab emo fans protesting their depiction as a suicide cult and defending the music of emo bands, such as My Chemical Romance (see fig.\u00a01). What is also noteworthy about the coverage is that it is almost entirely made up of broadsheet titles covering a story of popular criticism of moral panic type reporting, particularly in the <em>Daily Mail<\/em> but also in the tabloid press more generally. This coverage also reveals that at least half of the items report the planning and announcement of the march <em>before<\/em> it happens, thereby acknowledging the existence of alternative, internet-based \u00bbviral media\u00ab as the source of the anti-<em>Mail<\/em> campaign.<\/p>\n<p>And as for the teen \u00bbfolk devils\u00ab predicted by the panic model, the marchers on the <em>Mail<\/em> are far from <em>inarticulate<\/em>. For example, Anni Smith, the 16-year-old organizer of the protest, claimed the <em>Mail<\/em> coverage was: \u00bbbadly researched journalism in danger of promoting irresponsible stereotyping\u00ab (quoted in <em>The Independent<\/em>, 23\u00a0May 2008). So unexpected was this news event and its publicly articulated criticism that the <em>Mail<\/em> was compelled to release a statement defending itself (reported in <em>The Guardian<\/em>, 2\u00a0June 2008):<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"tsquotation\">The <strong>Daily Mail\u2019s<\/strong> coverage of the \u203aEmo\u2039 movement has been balanced, restrained and above all, in the public interest. Genuine concerns were raised at the inquest earlier this month on 13-year-old Emo follower <strong>Hannah Bond<\/strong> who had been self-harming and then tragically killed herself.\u00a0[\u2026] In common with other newspapers we ran an accurate news story recording the coroner\u2019s remarks and the parents\u2019 comments. We also published two other articles, one of which explained the background to the <strong>Hannah<\/strong> tragedy in calm and un-sensational language. The other was a first person opinion piece by a well-known writer, written from the perspective of a mother concerned for her children. We have also run two prominent page lead letters from an Emo music fan and from a fan of My Chemical Romance defending their point of view.\u00a0[\u2026] Since this protest was announced a great deal of misinformation has appeared on the internet, much of which confuses what the <strong>Daily Mail<\/strong> has actually published with the comments of web site readers and blogs over which we have no control and which have stirred up emotions. (Emphasis in original)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In their statement of defence, the <em>Mail<\/em> describes its coverage as balanced, objective and in the \u00bbpublic interest\u00ab, contrasting this with the online activism of the MCR fans, which it accuses of \u00bbstirring up emotions\u00ab and spreading \u00bbdisinformation\u00ab. The irony here is that successful moral panic discourse works through a process of exaggeration and distortion, made possible by different newspaper titles competing, rather than seeking to question the coverage and even defend the putative folk devils being stigmatized, as was the case with the \u00bbattempted\u00ab emo panic story.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03abb01_ALAMY.jpg\" alt=\"Young, smiling female EMO fans protesting. They are holding a cardboard sign saying \u00bbWere not a cult! Were an army! The MCRmy\u00ab.\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"caption-text\"><b>Figure 1:<\/b> This phrase is a quote from MCR band leader Gerard Way, reacting to the Mail coverage onstage at Reading festival. Photo: Jenny Matthews\/Alamy.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5>\u00bbSuccessful\u00ab Moral Panic<a href=\"#fn8\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref8\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>8<\/sup><\/a><\/h5>\n<p>Now we turn to the headbangers, burnouts or \u00bbchildren of ZoSo\u00ab: the folk devils at the centre of the USA panic (Brown 2011b). In the period from 1984 to 1991, the genre of heavy metal and the youth culture identified with it were subject to a sustained campaign of elite condemnation and mass-mediated moral panic that was unprecedented even by the standards of the troubled history of the reception of popular teenage music fads and fashions in North America (Chastagner 1999; Weinstein 2000, 265\u201470; Walser 2014, 137\u201451). The initiators of the campaign were an organization that called itself the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), largely \u00bbcomposed of Washington D.C. wives and mothers\u00ab (Martin and Segrave 1993, 292), such as Susan Baker and Tipper Gore. The PMRC charged that rock music had become sexually explicit, morally depraved and pornographic. They produced a list of offending songs (known as \u00bbthe Filthy Fifteen\u00ab),<a href=\"#fn9\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref9\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>9<\/sup><\/a> the majority of which were by heavy metal bands, and called for a ratings system that would control access to such music by minors. The campaign, which typically focused on quoting \u00bbexplicit\u00ab lyrics and \u00bbobjectionable\u00ab album covers from the PMRC\u2019s \u00bbbad list\u00ab (ibid., 293\u201494), received widespread coverage in national media, such as <em>Newsweek<\/em>, the <em>Washington Post<\/em>, <em>The Phil Donahue Show<\/em>, <em>CBS Morning News<\/em> and <em>Today<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Following a presentation on the \u00bbevils of rock music\u00ab by the PMRC to the Justice Department\u2019s Commission on Pornography, the Senate Committee initiated proceedings into \u00bbporn rock\u00ab and record labelling, held on 19\u00a0September 1985. There, several accredited \u00bbexpert\u00ab witnesses claimed a causal connection between \u00bbepidemic\u00ab rates of male suicides and heavy metal songs:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"tsquotation\">Some rock artists actually seem to encourage teen suicide. Ozzie Osbourne sings \u00bbSuicide Solution.\u00ab Blue Oyster Cult sings \u00bbDon\u2019t Fear the Reaper.\u00ab AC\/DC sings \u00bbShoot to Thrill.\u00ab Just last week in Centerpoint, a small Texas town, a young man took his life while listening to the music of AC\/DC. He was not the first.\u00a0[\u2026]\n<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nThis is Steve Boucher. Steve died while listening to AC\/DC\u2019s \u00bbShoot to Thrill.\u00ab Steve fired his father\u2019s gun into his mouth. A few days ago I was speaking in San Antonio. The day before I arrived, they buried a young high school student. This young man had taken his tape deck to the football field. He hung himself while listening to AC\/DC\u2019s \u00bbShoot to Thrill.\u00ab Suicide has become epidemic in our country among teenagers. Some 6,000 will take their lives this year. Many of these young people find encouragement from some rock stars who present death as a positive, almost attractive alternative.\u00a0[\u2026]\n<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nOzzie Osbourne on his first solo album, shown here, sings a song called \u00bbSuicide Solution.\u00ab Ozzie insists that he in no way encourages suicidal behavior in young people, and yet he appears in photographs such as these in periodicals that are geared toward the young teenage audience. For those of you who cannot make that out because of the lights, it is a picture of Ozzie with a gun barrel stuck into his mouth. (U.S. Congress. Senate 1985, 12\u201414).\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In October 1985, Osbourne was sued by a 19-year-old youth\u2019s parents, who claimed that their son was listening to the artist\u2019s record the night he took his own life. In the summer of 1990, the band Judas Priest was taken to court by the parents of two boys who acted out a suicide pact, allegedly at the behest of \u00bbsubliminal (or backward) messages\u00ab placed on the album, <em>Stained Class<\/em> (1978). Such claims reflected widespread fears among religious organizations, such as Parents Against Subliminal Seduction (PASS), over the impact of Satanism and satanic symbols on impressionable youth (for example, Raschke 1990, 171; Richardson 1991).<\/p>\n<p>But a legal obstacle the detractors had, which became apparent in the attempt to indict the musicians Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest, citing the lyrical themes of \u00bbSuicide Solution\u00ab and \u00bbBeyond the Realms of Death\u00ab, was the First Amendment, which defends the right of US citizens to express an opinion, artistic, political or otherwise. This allowed the legal defence of the bands to say that such claims would not be accepted in a court of law. This is why the two attempts to indict Ozzy Osbourne were not successful and why the prosecuting attorneys went for Judas Priest as the \u00bbsubliminal criminals\u00ab in the Jay Vance and Ray Belknap \u00bbbackmasking\u00ab trial rather than citing lyrics from the ballad \u00bbBeyond the Realms of Death\u00ab, since a subliminal message could be viewed as unconscious (\u00bbsupraliminal speech\u00ab) and therefore not covered by the First Amendment (Brown 2011b, 26).<\/p>\n<p>All of this \u00bbexpert testimony\u00ab has been critiqued by Deena Weinstein (2000, 250\u201457) and Robert Walser (1993) as musically and politically suspect. What is also apparent in the cited extracts is that the claims lack a causal link and rely on the repeating of what have come to be known as \u00bbmagic correlations\u00ab, that is, confusing correlation with causation. A notable example among many that followed is a study that links the youth suicide rate in fifty US states with the subscription rate of heavy metal magazines (Stack et\u00a0al. 1994). Despite this lack of causal evidence, the flurry of youth cultural panics about metal and hardcore punk music and its detrimental impact on American youth did result in more than \u00bbsymbolic\u00ab outcomes, such as the \u00bbParental Advisory\u00ab label.<a href=\"#fn10\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref10\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>10<\/sup><\/a> This was especially the case with panics about youth suicide cases viewed as a direct result of listening to heavy metal music, which is pointedly documented in Donna Gaines\u2019 ethnographic study, <em>Teenage Wasteland<\/em> (Gaines 1998).<\/p>\n<p>Gaines\u2019 book opens with a double suicide pact: two teenage girls and two boys gas themselves in a car in a garage in the blue-collar suburb of Bergenfield, New Jersey, in March 1987, while allegedly listening to heavy metal on the car stereo.<a href=\"#fn11\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref11\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>11<\/sup><\/a> They and their friends are described by Gaines as \u00bbkids who listened to thrash metal, had shaggy haircuts, wore lots of black and leather.\u00a0[\u2026] Teenage suburban rockers whose lives revolved around their favorite bands\u00ab (ibid.,\u00a03). Gaines, a sociologist, social worker and journalist, was commissioned by <em>The Village Voice<\/em> to investigate the story behind the suicide. She had previously worked as a \u00bbstreet counsellor\u00ab for troubled adolescents on Long Island, New York\u00a0\u2014 and, more importantly, as she later revealed, had grown up amidst a teen drugs-and-music youth culture nearly 20 years earlier, and had seen friends become addicts, end up in detoxification centres or meet early deaths (Frymer 2006). Despite her academic credentials, Gaines brought a degree of empathy to her investigation and importantly a knowledge of heavy metal and hardcore music. In fact, it was the recognition of her \u00bbAce of Spades\u00ab Mot\u00f6rhead lapel button that persuaded the first group she approached to begin to open up and confide in her about their feelings and the situation they faced as \u00bbburnouts\u00ab, in the upper poor (blue-collar) suburb of Bergenfield (Gaines 1998, 58).<\/p>\n<p>Working-class families moved to Bergenfield in the late 1950s and 1960s because of rising incomes, reasonable housing costs and an expanding school system. But by the 1980s, deindustrialization had decisively impacted the US economy, resulting in a decline in skilled and technical industry jobs, educational opportunities and employment prospects, which impacted blue-collar youth the most. As Ryan Moore describes it:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"tsquotation\">The jobs awaiting them after graduation were more likely to be in services and retail, where social skills and personal appearance are of paramount importance, thus putting metalheads, especially the self-described \u203adirtbags\u2039, at a disadvantage. With their opportunities for mobility restricted to military service or the [pipedream] of rock stardom, these young metalheads looked to their future like \u00bbanimals before an earthquake\u00ab<a href=\"#fn12\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref12\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>12<\/sup><\/a>. (Moore 2010, 82)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As a largely redundant population of declining economic value, the metalheads that Gaines observed were often being shuffled between institutions and diagnosed with various psychological and behavioural conditions. Some were warehoused at a place called \u00bbthe Rock\u00ab (in Rockleigh), a special education facility that housed those who had been diagnosed as \u00bbemotionally disturbed\u00ab (Gaines 1998, 119). While in the 1980s, federal funds for social services had become increasingly scarce, the new politically sanctioned and funded special education sector was expanding, not least because well-intended service providers were labelling troubled teens as \u00bbemotionally disturbed\u00ab to get funding for them. There was also an extraordinary growth in rehabilitation institutions and private mental hospitals for teenagers, diagnosed with <em>conduct disorder<\/em> (CD) and <em>oppositional defiant disorder<\/em> (ODD) (Moore 2010, 82). This is confirmed by the number of young people confined in psychiatric wards, which rose from 16&#8239;735 in 1980 to over 36&#8239;000 in 1986 (Males 1996, 248). In effect, the private psychiatric hospitals capitalized on the parental climate of fear by including CD and ODD in mental health treatment, with the typical 30-day detention diagnosis stay bringing in around $16&#8239;000 in insurance money, leading Mike Males to wryly rename the problem \u00bbKid-with-Insurance-Disorder\u00ab (ibid., 243\u201453). Both Gaines and Moore provide examples from interviews with teens who were persuaded by their parents to check into a local institution for psychiatric testing and then found themselves detained for 30 days because of their age (being under 18) (Moore 2010, 83; Gaines 1998, 127).<\/p>\n<p>A particular noted example of a special facility for the rehabilitation of youth who had allegedly become the victims of drug use, suicidal thoughts and satanic worship through their fandom of heavy metal and punk was the Orange County, California, based Back in Control Training Center, which was founded on the principle that metal was a cult and metal fans needed to be deprogrammed (Lewis 1986). According to Rosenbaum and Prinsky (1991), in one jurisdiction in California, a list entitled \u00bbRules to Depunk or Demetal\u00ab had been circulated to probation officers. According to this list, taken from the Back in Control Center\u2019s <em>Punk Rock and Heavy Metal Handbook<\/em> (Pettinichio 1986), minors are ordered:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Not to dress in any style that represents Punk Rock or Heavy Metal.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Not to wear hair (dye or cut) in any style that represents Punk Rock or Heavy Metal.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Not to associate with known Punk Rockers or Heavy Metalers.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Not to wear any Punk Rock or Heavy Metal accessories\u00a0\u2014 earrings, or jewelry, spikes or studs.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Not to frequent any place where Punk Rock or Heavy Metal is main interest.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Not to listen to Punk Rock or Heavy Metal music.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Not to write or draw Punk Rock or Heavy Metal.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Not to tattoo, cut, harm or injure self in any way.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>To keep parents informed of whereabouts at all times. (Rosenbaum and Prinsky 1991, 531)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Rosenbaum and Prinsky further add that these rules had been attached by probation officers to the last three \u00bbblank\u00ab categories of the court rules of probation (ibid.).<\/p>\n<p>In summary, the campaign by the PMRC against heavy metal music and its fans during the period of its greatest popularity (1984\u20141991) is an example of a successful moral panic, which demonized a section of blue-collar youth as \u00bbfolk devils\u00ab. This had consequences for many of them, from having to live with negative stereotypes of themselves (burnouts, dirtbags, etc.) to being sectioned in psychiatric units and\/or processed as delinquents via \u00bbde-metaling\u00ab programs (Brown 2011a).<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"3\">Part Two<\/h4>\n<h5>Revising the Study: The Thrash Suicide Ballad<\/h5>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"tsquotation\">The album I am holding up in front of you is by the band Metalica [sic!]. It is on Electra Asylum records. A song on this album is called \u00bbFaith in Black.\u00ab It says the following. \u00bbI have lost the will to live. Simply nothing more to give. There is nothing more for me. I need the end to set me free.\u00ab \u00bbDeath greets me warm. I will just say good-bye.\u00ab (U.S. Congress. Senate 1985, 14)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a quote from the US Senate hearing (missed by Weinstein, Walser and other scholars) concerning the \u00bbwell-known\u00ab thrash metal ballad \u00bbFaith in Black\u00ab by Metallica. The song, from the <em>Ride the Lightning<\/em> album (1984), is entitled \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab not \u00bbFaith in Black\u00ab, the correct title surely more indicative of a contemplative suicide song. Although Metallica\u2019s lead singer\/guitarist and lyricist, James Hetfield, has said the song was written about the depression he felt after the band had all their guitars and equipment stolen on the eve of a European tour, the lyrics convey a distinct sense of despair and inner turmoil that support the accusation made in the hearing that it is in effect a \u00bbsuicide note\u00ab.<\/p>\n<p>For Pillsbury, the song offers \u00bban inward-looking psychological journey in which the narrator describes his decision to commit suicide\u00ab (Pillsbury 2006, 41). Pillsbury goes on to name the song cycle it initiated Metallica\u2019s \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab paradigm<a href=\"#fn13\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref13\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>13<\/sup><\/a> and, interestingly, compares it to the 1980s power ballad. However, the lyrical theme of most power ballads\u00a0\u2014 the ups and downs of romantic love\u00a0\u2014 has no place in the song cycle, although the presence of a \u00bbless-aggressive male interiority\u00a0[\u2026] goes some way toward linking the two\u00ab (ibid., 54). Indeed, the \u00bbpresentation of interiority\u00ab is viewed as the \u00bbprimary aesthetic characteristic\u00ab of this song cycle (ibid., 55). As I have already noted, there are other songs in the thrash genre that deal with this subject matter, such as Megadeth\u2019s \u00bbIn My Darkest Hour\u00ab (1988) and \u00bbA Tout Le Monde\u00ab (1994). It would therefore be more appropriate to name the song type the <em>thrash metal suicide ballad<\/em>: slow or mid-tempo songs that are concerned with a troubled \u00bbinterior\u00ab contemplation on mortality or, in effect, a \u00bbsuicide note\u00ab contemplating a future death or past failed attempts.<\/p>\n<p>This genre category or song type is certainly recognized by the heavy metal audience. An example of this is the <em>Ranker<\/em> website listing the \u00bb20\u00a0Best Metal Songs\u00ab on \u00bbsuicidal thoughts\u00a0\u2014 not actions\u00ab, as voted for by the audience (see fig.\u00a02).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig02.png\" alt=\"Screenshots of Ranker website.\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"caption-text\"><b>Figure 2:<\/b> <em>Ranker<\/em>\u2019s 20 Best Metal Songs About Suicide. Ranker.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The top three suicide songs are \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab, \u00bbBeyond the Realms of Death\u00ab and \u00bbSuicide Solution\u00ab.<a href=\"#fn14\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref14\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>14<\/sup><\/a> The more recent ones (\u00bbHurt\u00ab by Nine Inch Nails and \u00bbSuicide Note Pt.\u00a01\u00ab by Pantera) that have made the list demonstrate that the suicide ballad is a constant in heavy metal and its many sub-genre styles. However, identifying \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab as a suicide song is important not only because it <em>is<\/em> cited in the US Senate hearing, but also because it is the first in a sequence of ballads offering a troubled \u00bbinterior narrative\u00ab that is reflected elsewhere in thrash metal, with the likes of Megadeth and also the crossover hardcore\/thrash band Suicidal Tendencies. In the latter instances, as will be illustrated, these songs are also identified with popular MTV videos.<\/p>\n<p>Unearthing this evidence of the existence and circulation of suicide songs in this period is important in rebalancing the argument that \u00bb[t]he folk devil is more likely to be recruited from groups who cannot speak for themselves and have nobody to speak for them\u00ab (Critcher 2003, 145). While it remains the case that the popular genre of heavy metal and its fans were stigmatized and attacked by sections of the power elite in this period\u00a0\u2014 and, in the case of the fans, lacked the means to contest their demonization\u00a0\u2014 the existence of such songs and their popularity with heavy metal audiences suggests that a <em>dialogic<\/em> conversation or <em>shared<\/em> dialogue between metal musicians and metal fans was taking place, one concerned with addressing the experience of trying to \u00bblive through\u00ab this difficult economic and politically distorted period and, in the process, to cohere a shared sense of community, collective identity and empathy.<\/p>\n<p>This leads to the argument that the thrash suicide ballad directly addresses the feelings of metal\u2019s teen blue-collar fans in this period and offers a means of solace regarding the debilitating impact of neoliberal policies on their lives. It also suggests that the high youth suicide rate for blue-collar youth in this period was not a reflection of the popularity of metal but of the reality that there were no jobs for the former sons and daughters of skilled manual families\u00a0\u2014 or just \u00bbdead-end\u00ab ones. Thinking about suicide is part and parcel of a sense that there is \u00bbno future\u00ab because the jobs that they normally would have done are just not there anymore. Alternatively, other songs released during this period, like Suicidal Tendencies\u2019 \u00bbInstitutionalized\u00ab or Metallica\u2019s \u00bbWelcome Home (Sanitarium)\u00ab, address the development of local institutions such as the Back in Control Training Centre, that had a vested interest in labelling youth as depressed, unstable and in need of psychiatric assessment and 30-day detentions (Gaines 1998, 126; Males 1996, 219).<\/p>\n<h5>Exploring the Musical and Lyrical Features of the Suicide Ballad<\/h5>\n<p>The ways in which Metallica (and Megadeth) approach the ballad are quite distinctive and seem to be a deliberate musical strategy. How much of this was a conscious effort to distinguish their power-ballad style, or to what extent they looked to earlier hard rock and metal variants, is open to speculation. Although \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab, for example, is based around conventional chords (Am, C, G, Em), it has an elaborate musical opening, combining electric and acoustic guitars, leading into the main picked arpeggio derived from a B\u00a0minor power chord. This has a modal quality that works as a drone to allow a dark but virtuoso solo guitar embellishment, leading to the melodic hook of the song that combines both guitar tones. Hetfield\u2019s voice is not clean but is subject to a phasing effect as it enters. The song is built around two sets of two melodic verses and an end verse, which are contrasting.<a href=\"#fn15\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref15\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>15<\/sup><\/a> Like most power ballads, the chorus enters after the second verse, employing power chords, but in the thrash style, these are heavily palm-muted and aggressively heavy. It is distinctive that there are no words in the repeated chorus. What is also distinctive is that the bridge leads to a different end section, which is introduced and performed in the thrash style, with descending chromatics and driving percussive guitars, leading to a \u00bbsoaring, transcendent guitar solo\u00ab (Pillsbury 2006, 44), which \u00bbplays out\u00ab the piece.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbWelcome Home (Sanitarium)\u00ab (from <em>Master of Puppets<\/em>, 1986), a song about a character who is falsely incarcerated in a mental institution, could be said to offer variations on this template. It opens in a similar way to \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab with a picked arpeggio pattern, although the tone of the guitars is very dark, that again ends with a soaring melodic two-part guitar solo embellishment announcing the arrival of the first verse. The opening words of the song are very mournful: \u00bbWelcome to where time stands still\u00a0\/ No one leaves and no one will\u00ab, indicating a profound sense of resignation that the inmates of the psychiatric ward \u00bblabelled mentally deranged\u00ab must learn to accept their fate. But the narrator of the song nevertheless dreams of a state of freedom, where there are \u00bbNo locked doors, no windows barred\u00a0\/ No things to make my brain seem scarred\u00ab. But it is nevertheless a \u00bbdream of reality\u00ab, from which the inmate awakes to the real: \u00bbThey keep me locked up in this cage\u00a0\/ Can\u2019t they see it\u2019s why my brain says rage\u00ab.<a href=\"#fn16\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref16\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>16<\/sup><\/a> Although James Hetfield has said the inspiration for the song was the book (1962) or film (1975), <em>One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest<\/em>, it nevertheless seems to aptly describe the incarceration of troubled youth in this period. We also must wonder why Hetfield was drawn to this particular scenario, the suggestion being that there is more than a hint of insight and empathy to the choice. Unlike \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab, the chorus enters after the third verse (the song is made up of two sets of three verses, two choruses and two end verses) employing even heavier power chords, palm muted in the thrash style. But the words, although they are sung in an aggressive full-throated manner by Hetfield, repeat the resignation of the intro: \u00bbSanitarium, leave me be \/ Sanitarium, just leave me alone\u00ab. This is followed by a guitar embellishment in a similar manner to the opening refrain. The second chorus, ushered in by some words of resistance: \u00bbThey think our heads are in their hands\u00a0\/ But violent use brings violent plans\u00ab, leads into an extended bridge, with descending chromatics and driving percussive guitar riff interchanges, which eventually subdues to usher in the remaining two verses, leading to a soaring arpeggio-ornamented guitar solo from Kirk Hammett. \u00bbWelcome Home (Sanitarium)\u00ab is structured in a similar way to \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab, but it differs in terms of its much more extended end section, which, while not resolving the problem of incarceration, does resist it both musically and lyrically via guitar and vocal aggression.<\/p>\n<h5>Suicide Song MTV Videos<\/h5>\n<p>Like Metallica, Megadeth have also released a series of songs about depression and suicide in the heyday of the thrash metal genre, such as \u00bbIn My Darkest Hour\u00ab (1988), \u00bbSkin o\u2019 My Teeth\u00ab (1992) and \u00bbA Tout Le Monde\u00ab (1994). But it is the latter song that is arguably the most poignant, announcing as it does the intention of the singer and composer of the band, Dave Mustaine, to commit suicide. It was also a very popular MTV-rotation video at the time, which dramatically illustrates the lyrics of the song.<a href=\"#fn17\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref17\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>17<\/sup><\/a> For example, at the beginning of the video, Mustaine\u2019s name is being cut into a headstone, an image which is framed by the words: \u00bbThese are the last words I\u2019ll ever speak\u00a0\/ They\u2019ll set me free\u00ab. After this, we repeatedly see Megadeth fans, wearing the band T-shirt, jumping into an open grave, accompanied by the chorus refrain: \u00bb\u00c0 tout le monde, \u00e0 tous mes amis\u00a0\/ Je vous aime, je dois partir\u00ab (\u00bbTo all the world, to all my friends\u00a0\/ I love you, I have to go\u00ab) (see fig.\u00a03).<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig03a-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 1\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"column\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig03b.png\" alt=\"Film still 2\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"column\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig03c.png\" alt=\"Film still 3\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"caption-text\"><b>Figure 3:<\/b> Megadeth: \u00bbA Tout Le Monde\u00ab (video). YouTube.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The aptly named crossover hardcore\/thrash band Suicidal Tendencies (\u00bbSuicidal\u00ab to their fans) have lots of songs (although the majority are not ballads) about suicidal thoughts and troubled interior monologues. \u00bbInstitutionalized\u00ab is one of their most poignant songs and MTV videos. It successfully satirizes the incarceration of youth, by their worried parents in the wake of the moral panic, in local psychiatric institutions. In the video, the parents do it themselves in their own home, first removing fan memorabilia so they can incarcerate their son in his bedroom cell. The first-person (son) narrator describes what follows: first they say he is on drugs, which accounts for his depression. Then they give him drugs to calm him down, so they can control him: \u00bbIt\u2019s too much work to help a crazy.\u00ab But his mates\u00a0\u2014 the rest of the band\u00a0\u2014 are on hand to liberate him from his bedroom imprisonment (see fig. 4).<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig04a-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 1\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig04b-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 2\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig04c-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 3\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig04d-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 4\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig04e-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 5\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig04f-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 6\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"caption-text\"><b>Figure 4:<\/b> Suicidal Tendencies: \u00bbInstitutionalized\u00ab (video with lyrics). YouTube.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Once the rescue has been achieved, the video shifts to the band playing live in front of their hardcore\/thrash fans, where a sense of community and protest is communicated by the band, and especially the rapper\/lead singer Mike Muir, in a series of frames, reinforced by the concert footage of the fans moshing and stage diving, immersed in a collective cultural expression of resistance (see fig.\u00a05).<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig05a-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 1\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig05b-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 2\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig05c-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 3\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig05d-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 4\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig05e-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 5\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"column-50\">\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/03fig05f-2.png\" alt=\"Film still 6\" style=\"width:100%\">\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"caption-text\"><b>Figure 5:<\/b> Suicidal Tendencies: \u00bbInstitutionalized\u00ab (video with lyrics). YouTube.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The line \u00bbWe decided?!\u00ab announces a challenge to the definition of the elite claim\u2019s makers: \u00bbMy best interest?!\u00a0[\u2026] How can you say what my best interest is?\u00ab The pivotal moment of expression is: \u00bbWhat are you trying to say? <em>I\u2019m crazy<\/em>??? When I went to <em>your<\/em> schools, I went to <em>your<\/em> churches, I went to <em>your<\/em> institutional learning facilities\u00ab (cited in Gaines 1998, 126).<a href=\"#fn18\" class=\"footnote-ref\" id=\"fnref18\" role=\"doc-noteref\"><sup>18<\/sup><\/a> Here, clearly Muir is speaking to \u00bbus\u00ab (the metal fans and community) about the situation they find themselves in and the controlling and dominating social structure that surrounds it\u00a0\u2014 schools, religion, family, community and government (what structuralist philosopher Louis Althusser, following Antonio Gramsci, would define as the ISAs: Ideological State Apparatuses)\u00a0\u2014 that are now stigmatising their sons and daughters as \u00bbfolk devils\u00ab. Therefore, in this song\/video, we have an example of folk devils <em>fighting back<\/em>, offering a critique of the powerful that argues that the depression, mental illness and madness suffered by metal fans defines\u00a0\u2014 or indicts\u00a0\u2014 the truth of their times.<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"4\">Conclusion<\/h4>\n<p>This paper has offered a revision of previous research into moral panics about heavy metal and crossover-metal genres that were viewed as the cause of youth suicides in two different periods, 1984\u20141991 in the USA and 2008 in the UK. The key to the comparison was the issue of why the former was a successful moral panic and the latter a failed example. The evidence seemed to suggest that a failed moral panic was characterized above all by the would-be \u00bbfolk devil\u00ab having both the (social media) means and the (articulate) ability to fight back, which the other lacked. However, a re-examination of the US Senate hearing (1985) on music and suicide songs revealed that the band Metallica and their song \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab was also cited, which in turn pointed to a hitherto unexamined sub-genre song form: the thrash metal suicide ballad, which was prevalent at this time. Rather than confirming the claims of politicians and academic advocates of the negative impact of metal on youth, such songs offered a \u00bbdialogic\u00ab conversation between metal musicians and their fans that effectively addressed the experience of trying to \u00bblive through\u00ab this difficult economic and politically distorted period\u00a0\u2014 and in the process, cohere a sense of community, collective identity and feelings of empathy, collective frustration and anger. All of this is captured in the songs and videos discussed, suggesting that there was an attempt to \u00bbfight back\u00ab, despite the overwhelming local and national state power and media rhetoric that sought to demonize both the bands and their fans.<\/p>\n<h4>Endnotes<\/h4>\n<hr>\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn1\">\n<p>It was assumed by media critics that <em>The Black Parade<\/em> was the place where youth went when they took their own lives. But, in fact, the concept album centres on \u00bbThe Patient\u00ab dying from a terminal illness and joining with others in the bravery of collective resistance to their fate.<a href=\"#fnref1\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn2\">\n<p>Andy R. Brown. 2017.\u00a0\u00bbSongs in the Key of Depression, Suicide and Death: How Metal Musicians Sustained a Dialogue of Community with Their Fans in a Period of Moral Panic about Heavy Metal Music, 1984\u20131991\u00ab.\u00a0Paper presented as part of the panel \u00bbBack to the Culture: 80s Heavy Metal as a Community of Creativity, Resistance and Difference\u00ab (Andy R. Brown [Chair], Kevin Ebert [Xavier University] and Ross Hagen [Utah Valley University]), at <em>Boundaries and Ties: The Place of Metal Music in Communities<\/em>, 3rd\u00a0ISMMS Biennial International Conference, 9\u201311\u00a0June 2017, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada.<a href=\"#fnref2\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn3\">\n<p>Folk devils: \u00bbA concept widely used in the study of deviance, folk devils are social types that unite the negative qualities of which a society or group disapproves.\u00ab <em>Oxford Reference<\/em>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oxfordreference.com\/view\/10.1093\/oi\/authority.20110803095826458\">https:\/\/www.oxfordreference.com\/view\/10.1093\/oi\/authority.20110803095826458<\/a>. Accessed on 16\u00a0November 2023.<a href=\"#fnref3\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn4\">\n<p>Of course, as Walser states, the origin of the phrase itself is the title of Ozzy Osbourne\u2019s controversial song.<a href=\"#fnref4\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn5\">\n<p>Zeppelin\u2019s fourth album was untitled, except for four \u00bbrunes\u00ab found on the inner gatefold sleeve, the first of which appears to spell out \u00bbZoSo\u00ab.<a href=\"#fnref5\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn6\">\n<p>1984 to 1991 was the most sustained period of popularity of heavy metal in the USA (Brown 2016,\u00a061).<a href=\"#fnref6\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn7\">\n<p>In the UK, a mid-market newspaper is one that combines entertainment with coverage of important news events. Notable titles are the <em>Daily Mail<\/em> and the <em>Daily Express<\/em>, identified by their \u00bbblack\u00ab masthead in contrast to the \u00bbredtop\u00ab mastheads of the \u00bbdown-market\u00ab tabloids, such as <em>The Sun<\/em>, <em>Daily Mirror<\/em> and <em>Daily Star<\/em>. The broadsheet press, originally a description of their size, are titles that are identified by their \u00bbserious\u00ab news coverage and in-depth analysis. Notable titles are <em>The Guardian<\/em>, <em>The Times<\/em>, <em>The Telegraph<\/em> and <em>The Independent<\/em>.<a href=\"#fnref7\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn8\">\n<p>Parts of this subchapter are based on Brown 2018.<a href=\"#fnref8\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn9\">\n<p>The list was aimed at promoting a rating system for the content of recorded music: X\u2013Profane or sexually explicit; V\u2013Violent; O\u2013Occult; D\/A\u2013Drugs or Alcohol. Interestingly none of these categories refer to suicide, which only fully emerges in the US Senate hearing and the ensuing \u00bbsuicide\u00ab indictment trials.<a href=\"#fnref9\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn10\">\n<p>The \u00bbWarning: Explicit Content\u00ab label was adopted by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1987 and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in 2011.<a href=\"#fnref10\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn11\">\n<p>Police found a cassette tape cover of the AC\/DC album <em>If You Want Blood You\u2019ve Got It<\/em> (1978) at the investigative scene (Gaines 1998, 25).<a href=\"#fnref11\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn12\">\n<p>The phrase is taken from Gaines 1998, 155.<a href=\"#fnref12\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn13\">\n<p>Yet clearly there are similarly dark and contemplative suicidal songs penned by other bands in this period (see below).<a href=\"#fnref13\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn14\">\n<p>Since visiting the site in 2017, the list has changed its order of preference and added new entries, such as \u00bbTourniquet\u00ab by Evanescence, although \u00bbFade to Black\u00ab is still no.\u00a01.<a href=\"#fnref14\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn15\">\n<p>The full lyrics can be found at YouTube. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wpq7wn2YPYU\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wpq7wn2YPYU<\/a>. Accessed on 15 April 2024.<a href=\"#fnref15\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn16\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azlyrics.com\/lyrics\/suicidaltendencies\/institutionalized.html\">https:\/\/www.azlyrics.com\/lyrics\/suicidaltendencies\/institutionalized.html<\/a>. Accessed on 15 April 2024.<a href=\"#fnref16\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn17\">\n<p>The video was (allegedly) banned by MTV because they thought it promoted suicide, but it was reinstated after changes were added to the end section which lists how many teenagers commit suicide every year and the message: \u00bbSuicide is not an answer. Get help.\u00ab See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.songfacts.com\/facts\/megadeth\/a-tout-le-monde\">https:\/\/www.songfacts.com\/facts\/megadeth\/a-tout-le-monde<\/a>. Accessed 10 January 2023.<a href=\"#fnref17\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"fn18\">\n<p>Gaines adds, \u00bbAnd whenever this song played at shows throughout the 1980s, kids would regularly bleat the lyrics out, line by line\u00ab (ibid.).<a href=\"#fnref18\" class=\"footnote-back\" role=\"doc-backlink\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h4 id=\"5\">References<\/h4>\n<p><\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Bessman, Jim. 1990. \u00bbJudas Priest Defending Metal\u2019s Faith: Offers a \u203aPainkiller\u2039 to Hardcore Fans\u00ab. <em>Billboard<\/em>, 3\u00a0November 1990: 46 and 52.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Bo\u00ebthius, Ulf. 1995. \u00bbYouth, the Media and Moral Panics\u00ab. In <em>Youth Culture in Late Modernity<\/em>, ed. by Johan Fornas, and Goran Bolin, 39\u201457. London: Sage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Brown, Andy R. 2011a. \u00bbNo Method in the Madness? The Problem of the Cultural Reading in Robert Walser\u2019s <em>Running with the Devil: Power Madness and Gender in Heavy Metal Music<\/em> and Recent Metal Studies\u00ab. In <em>Can I Play With Madness? Metal, Dissonance, Madness and Alienation<\/em>, ed. by Colin A. McKinnon, Niall Scott, and Kristen Sollee, 63\u201472. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Brown, Andy R. 2011b. \u00bbSuicide Solutions? Or, How the Emo Class of 2008 Were Able to Contest Their Media Demonization, Whereas the Headbangers, Burnouts or \u203aChildren of Zoso\u2039 Generation Were Not\u00ab. <em>Popular Music History<\/em>\u00a06, no.\u00a01\u20142: 19\u201437.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Brown, Andy R. 2013. \u00bbSuicide Solutions? Or, How the Emo Class of 2008 Were Able to Contest Their Media Demonization, Whereas the Headbangers, Burnouts or \u203aChildren of Zoso\u2039 Generation Were Not\u00ab. 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Cham: Palgrave Macmillian.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Brown, Andy R. 2025. \u00bbThrash Metal\u00ab. In <em>Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World\u00a0<\/em>XIII. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Brown, Jonathan. 2008. \u00bbEMO: Welcome to the Black Parade\u00ab. <em>Independent<\/em>, 23\u00a0May 2008. Accessed on 5 August 2024. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/music\/features\/emo-welcome-to-the-black-parade-832854.html\">https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/music\/features\/emo-welcome-to-the-black-parade-832854.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Chastagner, Claude. 1999. \u00bbThe Parents\u2019 Music Resource Centre: From Information to Censorship\u00ab. <em>Popular Music\u00a0<\/em>18, no.\u00a02: 179\u201492.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Cohen, Stanley. (1972) 2002. <em>Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers<\/em>. 3rd\u00a0ed. London: Routledge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Critcher, Chas. 2003. <em>Moral Panics and the Media<\/em>. Buckingham: Open University Press.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Frymer, Benjamin. 2006. \u00bbSacred Profanities: Youth Alienation, Popular Culture, and Spirituality\u00a0\u2014 An Interview with Donna Gaines\u00ab. <em>InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies<\/em>\u00a02, no.\u00a01. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5070\/D421000566\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5070\/D421000566<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Gaines, Donna. (1990) 1998. <em>Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia\u2019s Dead End Kids<\/em>. 2nd\u00a0ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Lewis, Randy. 1986. \u00bbHandbook Weighs Heavy Metal for Parents\u00ab. <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em>, 22\u00a0August 1986. 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London: Macmillan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Moore, Ryan. 2010. <em>Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth Culture, and Social Crisis<\/em>. New York: New York University Press.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Pettinichio, Darlyne. 1986. <em>The Back in Control Centre Presents the Punk Rock and Heavy Metal Handbook<\/em> (pamphlet). Fullerton, CA: Back in Control.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Pillsbury, Glenn T. 2006. <em>Damage Incorporated: Metallica and the Production of Musical Identity<\/em>. New York: Routledge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Raschke, Carl A. 1990. <em>Painted Black: From Drug Killings to Heavy Metal\u00a0\u2014 The Alarming True Story of How Satanism is Terrorizing Our Communities<\/em>. New York: Harper Collins.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Richardson, James T. 1991. \u00bbSatanism in the Courts: From Murder to Heavy Metal\u00ab. In <em>The Satanism Scare<\/em>, ed. by James\u00a0T. Richardson, Joel Best, and David\u00a0G. Bromley, 205\u201417. 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September\u00a019, 1985<\/em>. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. <a href=\"https:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/2027\/uc1.31210006120719\">https:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/2027\/uc1.31210006120719<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Walser, Robert. (1993) 2014. <em>Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music<\/em>. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Weinstein, Deena. (1991) 2000. <em>Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture<\/em>. New York: Da Capo Press.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Young, Mary de. 1998. \u00bbAnother Look at Moral Panics: The Case of Satanic Day Care Centers\u00ab. <em>Deviant Behaviour: An Interdisciplinary Journal\u00a0<\/em>19, no.\u00a03: 257\u201478.<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"6\">Figures<\/h4>\n<p><\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Figure 1: Photo: \u00a9 Jenny Matthews\/Alamy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Figure 2: <em>Ranker<\/em>\u2019s 20 Best Metal Songs About Suicide. Ranker. Accessed on 31\u00a0May 2017. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ranker.com\/list\/metal-songs-about-suicide-self-harm\/ranker-metal\">https:\/\/www.ranker.com\/list\/metal-songs-about-suicide-self-harm\/ranker-metal<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Figure 3: Megadeth: \u00bbA Tout Le Monde\u00ab (video). YouTube. Accessed on 15\u00a0April 2024. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aU-dKoFZT0A\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aU-dKoFZT0A<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Figure 4: Suicidal Tendencies: \u00bbInstitutionalized\u00ab (video with lyrics). YouTube. Accessed on 15\u00a0April 2024. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YvYMej1meZU\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YvYMej1meZU<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bibliography\">Figure 5: Suicidal Tendencies, \u00bbInstitutionalized\u00ab (video with lyrics). YouTube. Accessed on 15 April 2024. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YvYMej1meZU\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YvYMej1meZU<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Or How Metal Musicians Sustained a Dialogue of Community with Their\u00a0Fans in\u00a0a\u00a0Period of\u00a0Moral\u00a0Panic about Heavy\u00a0Metal\u00a0Music Andy R. Brown Introduction With the partial exception of \u00bbSuicide Solution\u00ab (Ozzy Osbourne 1980), a song about drinking yourself into an early grave, none of the songs cited in the US Senate hearing (19\u00a0September 1985) on the \u00bbLabelling of Rock &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[199],"tags":[221,218,219,220],"class_list":["post-4376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musik-und-suizidalitaet","tag-emo","tag-folk-devils","tag-suicide-note","tag-thrash-metal-ballad"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Brown: Songs in the Key of Depression, Suicide and Death<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/en\/mdwp010-005\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Brown: Songs in the Key of Depression, Suicide and Death\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Or How Metal Musicians Sustained a Dialogue of Community with Their\u00a0Fans in\u00a0a\u00a0Period of\u00a0Moral\u00a0Panic about Heavy\u00a0Metal\u00a0Music Andy R. Brown Introduction With the partial exception of \u00bbSuicide Solution\u00ab (Ozzy Osbourne 1980), a song about drinking yourself into an early grave, none of the songs cited in the US Senate hearing (19\u00a0September 1985) on the \u00bbLabelling of Rock &hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/en\/mdwp010-005\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"mdwPress\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-02-21T09:10:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-06-13T08:16:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/mdwpress\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/download-1459070_1280.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Max Bergmann\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Max Bergmann\" \/>\n\t<meta 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