Are We Human, Or Are We Slayer?

For over four decades, I was terrified of Slayer. This isn’t terribly surprising because Slayer is Slayer and, more important, I was a child of the 1980s. We 80ennials were taught to fear many things: strangers with candy, masked serial killers, drugs, drug dealers, and hot sex. Anything in the cultural firmament that wasn’t a rerun of Happy Days could corrupt your innocence permanently.

Popular music wasn’t immune to this cultural puritanism. The Tipper Gores of the country were barnstorming the media throughout that whole decade, warning American families that Ozzy Osbourne was biting the heads off of bats, that Judas Priest was encouraging kids to commit suicide, and that Madonna was dry-humping award show stages. These artists were poisoning young minds, and something had to be done to prevent it. Perhaps a very small warning label on every album cover would do the trick.