In the end, the judge actually did agree that there were subliminal messages, but these were “only discernible after their location had been identified and after the sounds were isolated and amplified. Heavy metal is a friend that gives people great pleasure and enjoyment and helps them through hard times.” We accept that some people don’t like heavy metal, but we can’t let them convince us that it’s negative and destructive. “It tore us up emotionally hearing someone say to the judge and the cameras that this is a band that creates music that kills young people. Halford, "Heavy metal is a friend that gives people great pleasure and enjoyment and helps them through hard times" (Image credit: Getty Images) I think that was when the judge thought, ‘What am I doing here? No band goes out of its way to kill its fans’.” I had to sing Better By You, Better Than Me in court, a cappella. “We had no idea what a subliminal message was – it was just a combination of some weird guitar sounds, and the way I exhaled between lyrics. “It was like Disneyworld,” Rob Halford commented on the trial. Right away we found ‘Hey ma, my chair’s broken’ and ‘Give me a peppermint’ and ‘Help me keep a job’.” We bought a copy of the Stained Class album in a local record shop, went into the studio, recorded it to tape, turned it over and played it backwards. The lawyers didn’t want to do it, but I insisted. So I asked permission to go into a studio and find some perfectly innocent phonetic flukes.
The ramifications may have been so far-reaching as to have driven the music almost to the point of extinction.Īt the time, Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton said: “It’s a fact that if you play speech backwards, some of it will seem to make sense. This ban could even have reached the point where metal bands weren’t being signed, and might have faced problems in playing live.
But had the verdict gone the other way, it could have opened the portals for a raft of such cases and would probably have led to the banning of a considerable number of metal albums and songs. Eventually, the case against Priest and their label was dismissed.