I had to check the calendar to see if it was 1982, because I thought we left "metal = murder/suicide" back then and moved on to "emo = cutting/suicide"....

 

To be fair, I will let you know right off that this expert, Fyodor Kondratyev, is located in Russia, and his qualifications are being a professor at the Serbsky State Research Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry. That said -- how did he come to this conclusion? Well, he listened to 700 metal songs. Can't argue with numbers like that -- he certainly must have covered the vast majority of metal since its inception as a musical genre. After the arduous task, he came to the following conclusion:

 

"Having researched 700 most popular heavy metal songs revealed that half of them is about murder, 7 percent is positive about suicide, and 35 percent preaches a variety of Satanist ideologies."

 

I'm pausing for your laughter here.

 

He then went on to note, for no apparent reason, that 6,000 young Americans kill themselves every year while "under the influence" of music like that. How he knows this, I'm not entirely sure, but considering I see no reason to doubt his rock-solid research methodology, I'm sure this is accurate. That, or he contacted dead Americans via Ouija Board while under the influence of Cradle of Filth and they told him. Both seem scientifically sound to me.

 

He then returns to the sad state of affairs in Russia, whereupon he noted "a criminal" -- whose crimes are not mentioned; consider it irrelevant -- told him there are 1,000 Satanists in Moscow and in all of Russia, there are over 100 groups of Satanists. I wonder what else this criminal tells him... because it seems awfully hard to have such precise numbers on the Satanists in a city and/or country. Oh, wait -- the criminal told him "the Satanists" [which ones? STOP ASKING SO MANY QUESTIONS!] had committed over 20 ritual murders in the past five years.

 

And here's where we learn something: Mr. Kondratyev is of the mind that in Russia, it is "hardly possible" to put someone in jail on accusations of ritual homicide. So here's the lesson: when you're under the influence of heavy metal, or should you encounter any of the 350 Satan songs that Mr. Kondratyev listened to, anyway -- do not commit ritual homicide in America, as you will definitely end up in jail here for that. Go on over to Russia, where you're free to pretty much do any killing you want, so long as it's ritualistic.

 

Thanks to Mr. Kondratyev, we don't really know much more about anything today. In fact, we may have collectively lost an IQ point or two. But knowing is half the battle? Ignorance is bliss? Something like that....