Various Artists: The Devil Rides In (Spellbinding Satanic Magick & The Rockult 1966 – 1974)
Strawberry
4 CD box set available here
Out now
The seventies were a dark decade where weirdly for some resulted in a fixation with the occult, and this eccentric box set brings together rock’s response to the Devil.
Anyone who grew up in the seventies remembers it as a bleak decade full of industrial unrest, power cuts, racists marching round the streets, football hooligans and oddly a plethora of magazines, books and movies that focused on the occult and Satanism
Maybe people thought all the darkness in our nation had somehow opened a portal into the raging fires of hell with movies like the hugely popular The Devil Rides Out and cult classic The Wicker Man, featuring Beelzebub and dark magick. James Herbert jumped on the bandwagon with a series of bestselling horror novels avidly read by troubled teenagers, and popular magazines like Witchcraft that proudly offered a monthly insight into what Satan was up to sold well.
As always the music industry noticed there was money to be made, so a series of bands started writing odes to Lucifer which clearly influenced heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath, and later on the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. One of the joys of Cherry Red’s output is they are always happy to offer a home to decidedly odd compilations like this. Martin Calloman has done a fine job trawling rock’s dark underbelly bringing together tracks celebrating the occult in different ways into a broad movement that he has dubbed Rockult. Like most genres it soon split into subcultures including Popular Satanism, Let’s All Chant and the deliciously tilted Beelzefunk.
Atomic Rooster are the perfect band to start our journey into the dark side with a monster riff anchoring Death Walks Behind You that could have been on a Hammer Horror soundtrack, and a disintegrating Free get in on the act with Six Angels which is less gloomy. The Hammond Organ was a staple of this scene creating spooky moods like on Complex’s Witch’s Spell, and early Genesis offer the One-Eyed Hound that seems to be more dark magic than an ode to the Dark Lord.
One of the key tracks in this movement is Van Der Graaf Generator’s wonderfully over the top epic White Hammer, that is based around the Malleus Maleficarum, which gave detailed advice on how to find and punish witches. As the Hammond and reed instruments battle it out Peter Hammill offers some graphic descriptions of what happened to witches in the middle ages. The screaming intro to Zior’s Entrance Of The Mind must have influenced some NWOBHM bands, and Sam Gopals’s The Dark Lord is an all out ode to darkness.
CD two offers bands that loosely could be described as Popular Satanism, including psych pop cult band The Creation throwing a bit of light chanting into Nightmares. Aussies The Easybeats add some harpsichord into the spooky Heaven And Hell, and a flute makes an appearance in The Devil Rides Out by Icarus. The In-Be-Tween are actually early Slade so no surprise that Girl Child, I Am Evil Witchman is a classic blues stomper with an early ear for a hook.
Nirvana (not Kurt and the boys) are certainly more of the pop side of darkness on Christopher Lucifer before the She Devils make an appearance. Sonja Kristina’s vocals are evocative on Curved Air’s Screw detailing in some details the horrors of the rack used to torture witches into confessing their ‘sins’. Welsh rockers Man’s Erotica is risible soft porn that is really more Confessions of a Satanist. Pop star Sandie Shaw had a decent stab at Sympathy For The Devil, and Coven are only really remembered for pioneering The Sign Of the Horn hand gesture that became so beloved by metal bands.
The final CD opens with Third Ear Band’s eerie instrumental Devil’s Weed conjuring up images of the Witchfinder General riding across the land seeking out the spawn of Satan. Jazz of the evil variety is featured with Arthur Brown of Fire fame composing Devil’s grip, complete with a Hammond G-3 and Carl Palmer on drums, while Manfred Mann Chapter III take a break from pop to record Devil Woman.
Beelzefunk as a sub genre is stretching it a bit, but Curtis Knight Zeus with Motorhead’s Fast Eddie on guitar seems to use The Devil Made Me Do It to justify being a sexist dick, before fading pop stars Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch try to contact the Dark Lord through The Sun Goes Down in an attempt to raise their career from the dead. It seems appropriate that Cozy Powell’s drum heavy 1973 novelty hit Dance With the Devil ends things with plenty of scary beats, and fans of Tops Of The Pops will vividly remember Pan’s People valiantly dancing along to it.
This is by any standards an eccentric release, but Martin Calloman has pulled together the high and lows of a much forgotten musical response to a nation in turmoil that for a few years almost made the occult mainstream.
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Words by Paul Clarke, you can see his author profile here.
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