The maturing effect of life experiences has changed the way I view this song. I planned to explain my choice here, but as I spent all day yesterday thinking and writing about it, I realized that it is going to take a lot longer than I expected. It’s Complicated.
KISS | "Destroyer" (1976) Kids In Satan's Service?
I missed their heyday. I was a tad young, but the rock group KISS was also highly taboo in the ultraconservative society of Southern Baptist Dallas in which I was raised. In fact, I remember being fascinated by the one church friend I had who was a KISS fan. How could he be? How could his parents let him? Didn't they know that KISS was an acronym for Kids In Satan's Service? Didn't they know that listening to music sung by devil worshippers would give the evil one just the inroad he needed to shake the faith of the faithful? This was the same reasons we avoided the Eagles "Hotel California." You know, the one with an album cover that was (rumored to be) a picture of a Satanic church in California. We trusted our leaders, "Christian" authors, and others to have discovered the Satanic messages in albums played backwards. It was too dangerous for us to check them out for ourselves. We were all just one listening session of an Iron Maiden album away from starting down the path to damnation.
It's taken decades of time and thousands of miles to get over this album burning mentality (not to mention significant $$ spent on therapy). Fortunately Spotify now allows me to go back and economically taste some of this forbidden musical fruit.
The judgement: KISS's "Destroyer" despite the hint-of-violence in the title, is not dangerous and in fact, most of what I have now heard from KISS is anything but edgy. Their greatest sin seems to rather unChristianlike hubris and some PG-rated sexual bravado. Their makeup and music isn't black magic, it's marketing. The music? Not bad. But they are to rock what the circus is to theater.
Book of Questions #2
“Do you believe in ghosts or evil spirits? Would you be willing to spend a night alone in a remote house that is supposedly haunted?”
With a definition of ghosts as the spirits of the dead that somehow exist (and act) among us, I guess I'm about 95% sure they don't exist. But IF they do exist, then I guess that it would be possible that negative energy in the form of what we call evil could hang on as well.