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Death Metal Band Stoked To Be Number One On Prisoner Torture Play List

“It’s Cool…We’re Up To Military Standards Of Audio Abuse”

Anti-Christian death metal band, Deicide, are proud and loud that they have been ranked Number One on a list of songs used by the American military, and private military contractors, to interrogate and torture ‘War on Terror’ prisoners.

So stoked are Deicide that their song ‘Fuck Your God’ has reached the top of at least one chart that they’ve renamed their MySpace to pay homage to torture and, well, themselves :

Deicide : US Tortures Prisoners With Our Music

Here’s Deicide’s drummer Steve Asheim :

“It’s cool. If we’re up to military standards of audio abuse, it makes me feel like Deicide’s doing our part for the troops.”

The non-Christian troops anyway.

Of course this moment is not the only history that Asheim has with the armed forces. “My dad was a marine, as were my uncle and grandfather…I didn’t follow in their footsteps since I was so busy with the band thing….”

Some of the tactical circumstances where prisoners may have heard “Fuck Your God” include sleep deprivation and interrogation disorientation.

Strange indeed that Americans would be blasting Deicide’s ‘Fuck Your God’ at brain-rattling volume at Muslims, considering the song is a pummeling blast of hate aimed at Christians :

It is our time to remove the savior,
Christians are weak and the bible is beaten….

Fuck Your God, Holy mother for the whore she is,
Fuck your God, bible thumper preaching threats from hymn,
Fuck your god, his revival and the holy Ghost,
Fuck your god; only tell us what we need to know,
Fuck your god, pointing fingers and then do as me,
Fuck your god, you are nothing and you’ll never be,
Fuck your god; it is Satan who in trusts my soul,
Fuck your god, where the Christians are I will not go.

And stranger still is this song choice considering that the ‘God’ of Christians and Muslims is the same alleged entity.

So who’s God is supposed to be fucked here?

Of course, as any Deicide fan will tell you, it’s all but impossible to decipher most Deicide lyrics from out of the apocalyptic blast of rampaging guitars and drums usually hammered at cyclonic speeds.

As the Torture Playlist reveals, it’s not so much the lyrics that are supposed to break the prisoners, but the chanting choruses and rhythms, some of which you would probably agree would be absolutely torturous to hear 20 or 30 times in a row at jet-engine level volume in a concrete cell or locked inside a shipping container :

Enter Sandman - Metallica

Swan Dive - Hed pe

If the inclusion of music from Sesame Street and Barney The Dinosaur for the purposes of sleep deprivation and general torture confuses you (and you don’t have young children), consider that while some of the music blasted at prisoners in Abu Ghraib, in Gitmo and at US bases in Afghanistan was chosen by military personnel and contractors, military psychological operations (psy-ops) also had a hand in song selection. Which probably explains Barney The Dinosaur and ‘Staying Alive’. And how many times could you take ‘Raspberry Beret’ or anything by Matchbox Twenty played at 130 decibels before you snapped?

The problem of lyrical content, and theme, of the Songs To Torture Prisoners By (Or With) doesn’t end with Deicide.

From Bulls On Parade by Rage Against The Machine :

Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes
Not need, just feed tha war cannibal animal
I walk tha corner to tha rubble that used to be a
Library
Line up to tha mind cemetery
They don’t gotta burn tha books they just remove ‘em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as tha cells
Rally round tha family, pockets full of shells
Rally round tha family
With pockets full of shells

Not exactly singing the praises of the military industrial complex, and clearly a call to arm for those ready to take up weapons to protect their families. Why blast insurgents with a pro-insurgency song?

From White America by Eminem :

(I’ve been) sent to lead the march right up to the steps of Congress
and piss on the lawns of the White House
To burn the flag….
To spit liquor in the faces of this democracy of hypocrisy

Mmmm, smell the patriotism.

From Born In The USA by Bruce Springsteen :

I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man

I had a buddy at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all gone

The inclusion of a song called ‘Born In The USA’ would seem to make sense, but Springsteen’s classic is clearly an anti-war song, even though a number of Republican politicians have, over the years, stupidly chosen it as their campaign theme songs. Springsteen was pissed when he learned Ronald Reagan was blasting ‘Born In The USA’ at rallies. How ticked off will he be when he finds out Americans are torturing Muslims to his biggest hit?

Hell’s Bells by AC/DC is probably closer to the ‘get the message’ word blast they might have been looking for :

I’m rolling thunder, pouring rain
I’m coming on like a hurricane
My lightning’s flashing across the sky
You’re only young but you’re gonna die
I won’t take no prisoners won’t spare no lives
Nobody’s putting up a fight
I got my bell I’m gonna take you to hell
I’m gonna get ya
Satan get ya

‘Hell’s Bells’ has been an immensely popular song for the American military for more than two decades. It was used as a sound weapon (to terrify the locals and force enemies from their hiding places) in Panama, the Gulf War of 1990-1991 and in the Battle Of Fallujah in 2004.

Drowning Pool’s ‘Bodies’ was a popular tune for US Army tank crews in Iraq during the first year of the war, as detailed in the excellent documentary Soundtrack To War.

Note - Back in an earlier career as a music journalist, I had a couple of interview-conversations with Deicide’s notorious singer/bassist Glen Burton. His voice on the phone was deep, threatening and perhaps just a little Satanic. Until, that is, he learned I was not taping the interview, and was getting down his quotes in shorthand. Then he laid off the Satan-voice, and sounded like an average suburban American dad. Which he was. The interview was interrupted by his wife (or partner) reminding him to pick up toilet paper and more milk when he went to the shops, after picking up the kid(s) from school. He had to wrap up the interview a few minutes early because one of his pets was sick and needed feeding.

So little time left in a day to kill God with a family and a mortgage to worry about.

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