In recent years, gory stories of serial killers have gained a lot of notoriety. From fiction books to TV series to podcasts and famous movies, and the music world is no exception. There is no doubt that many bands and artists have at some point taken on these cruel characters, perhaps not to celebrate their "graces", but to express their morbid curiosity perhaps for these minds (many of them brilliant for being cold and calculating), so much so that it has caused worldwide interest for the intrigue they represent. So, let´s take a look at some great examples of songs inspired by serial killers.
1. Rammstein - Mein Teil (Armin Meiwes)
"Mein Teil" is one of Rammstein's hardest songs, whose title translates as "my part", and tries to portray the horrifying case of the Rotemburg Cannibal, Armin Meiwes, and his submissive and conscientious victim Bernd Jürgen Brandes. For those who don't know the case: Meiwes posted on the Internet looking for a man who was willing to be mutilated and eaten, and Brandes, fascinated, read the post because it was just what he had been looking for since he was a child, to be castrated and eaten. In March 2001, the two men met and what had to happen happened, Meiwes cut off Brandes' penis and fried it in a frying pan and they ate it together. Afterward, Brandes bled to death and Meiwes froze the corpse to eat it bit by bit. Meiwes was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment.
2. Bathory - 33 Something (John Wayne Gacy)
Many may say that the fear of clowns is unjustified, but this man's terrible story proves that this fear is not so far from reality. Between 1972 and 1978 a large number of children and young people began to disappear in Cook County, Illinois. After a series of investigations, they found that John Wayne Gacy was guilty of at least 33 murders. Gacy usually met his victims when he performed at children's parties as the "Pogo" clown, then took them to his home to rape and murder them. He was sentenced to death in 1980 and was executed 14 years later. Because of the 33 victims, the famous Swedish black metal band Bathory released a song called "33 Something" and here we have some of the lyrics:
"Once you've played with Mr. Gacy
There's no way out. No release
In the attic is all hell, then in the
Basement you'll find peace"
3. Porcupine Tree - Blackest Eyes (Ted Bundy)
This seems to be a very melodic and beautiful song but this, within its strength and great melodies hides the sinister story of the mind of a serial killer, under a kind of dark poetry where the past, present, and future of the criminal are told in his verses. It is said that it was inspired by Ted Bundy, a killer of the seventies who killed and raped girls left and right. His specialty was women and he did not discriminate in age (several underage girls). Ted Bundy killed around one hundred women and never showed any signs of repentance. He insisted on his innocence in spite of the revealing evidence. When he was asked about the justification of his acts, he answered with total arrogance and indifference things like "What is one less? What does one less person mean on the face of the planet? He was finally executed in the electric chair in 1989 after a long time in which he gave unconnected clues to the police in order to prolong his trial and conviction. Ted Bundy's terrible acts remain present in most minds that have known his story due to movies and series about this character.
4. Marilyn Manson - The Nobodies (Eric Harris and Dilan Klebold)
"The Nobodies" is a song by the American industrial rock band Marilyn Manson. The song is addressed to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. This shooting has been causing and consequence of several controversies in the American idiosyncrasy, and even more so when Marilyn Manson dedicated songs to this brutal act unleashed at the point of shotguns by these two teenagers, considered one of the most terrible massacres made in high schools and universities in the USA. (A recurrent place in North America as the site of mass murders). In "Disposable Teens" Manson talked about them and even more in "The Nobodies". The media tried to blame Manson's influence on the tragedy, despite evidence to the contrary. Like many of his lyrics, it is about Manson's perception that the media tends to martyr and deify those who die in the public eye.
5. Ghost - Elizabeth (Countess Elizabeth Báthory)
Last but not least, I couldn't leave out of this list one of my favorite bands: Ghost. It was one of the first bands I started listening to metal and the reason why I wrote this blog to let people know about this band in a future publication. Ghost is a Swedish rock/metal band that was formed in Linköping in 2006. In 2010, they released a demo followed by a 7-inch vinyl titled "Elizabeth", tells the story of the macabre Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century Hungarian aristocrat who slaughtered her servant girls by pouring out their blood and collecting it, trying to absorb this young and pure blood to maintain her beauty, after an old witch cursed her and condemned her to look like an old woman at the age of 44. Her obsession was not only bloody, but she also liked to sleep brutally with her servants (of both sexes) in ritualistic acts and her castle was a den of the stench of human putrefaction. We are not very sure of the veracity of their atrocities, however, we cannot deny the incredible sound of this song and its lyrics that teleport us to the castle of the bloody countess with this beginning:
"Underneath the moonlight of old Hungarian skies
Buried in the blood-drenched earth, these barren lands of ice
She was an evil woman with an evil old soul
An' piercin' eyes emotionless, a heart so black and cold"
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