(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 5 November 2025 19:15, UK
There’s no arguing that Jack Black is one of the most devoted rock and roll fans in the world.
Despite being in one of the best bands to ever walk the land, Black knew that he was no match for the true immortals of the rock world who had been sent to deliver music from the heavens. But as anyone who has listened to their fair share of heavy music will know, it’s that Black’s taste in music does have a few artists that have been born in the underworld whenever they start playing.
Then again, the whole idea of bringing the occult into rock and roll was never taken all that seriously, most of the time. Even Black Sabbath, known by many as the first evil rock and roll band, were only branded as such by accident. Ozzy Osbourne never wanted the inverted crosses on his album cover, but when you have songs about a demon hunting you down, it’s hard for parents to put the pieces together and think that you are devil worshippers.
But as metal got more well-known, there would always be people willing to push the envelope a little bit more when it came to what could be done with metal. Rob Halford had already been hiding homoerotic lyrics in half of Judas Priest’s catalogue that would have triggered the conservatives of the day, but Black grew up at a time when the biggest names in metal were people like Iron Maiden.
That’s not to say that Iron Maiden was purely all about the occult by any stretch. All they knew was they didn’t want to be roped in with the punk crowd that was slowly taking over England, and whereas someone like John Lydon was happy to spit at the audience and insult everyone that came his way, Steve Harris wanted to blow people away through the raw power of the music whenever they played.
They already had their branding down to a science with their mascot, Eddie, but when Number of the Beast was unleashed, fans were right to be scared. This was metal in its purest form, and while not everything was about demons, seeing a black sky with Eddie controlling Satan that is wreaking havoc across the world was everything that a teenage kid would have wanted to hear after the thousandth Zeppelin riff or Aerosmith guitar line.
And while Black bragged that Tenacious D had their own unholy riffs, he felt that Maiden could be one of the most evil bands of all time, saying, “Here’s the thing about Maiden: They’re one of the greatest metal bands of all time and here’s why. They are the band that would have a priest out front saying ‘DON’T GO IN THERE!’ They took devil music as far as it could go. After ‘666–Number of the Beast,’ you couldn’t go any more devil-y. And that was kind of the end of the devil.”
If you’re listening to Maiden today, though, ‘Number of the Beast’ is far from the most sinister song ever written. For one thing, the band is playing in a major key, and while that might have triggered some alarm bells from people thinking they were worshipping the devil, the whole song reads more like a cautionary tale that you’d find in a secondrate horror film where someone comes upon a Satanic ritual taking place.
Even if every member of the band made it a point of going to church every single weekend, that wouldn’t have stopped them from being celebrated for breaking down doors for evil music. Most people would have been running in fear from a band like them back in the day, but where most concerned parents and sheltered kids only saw danger, everyone knew that Maiden were about having fun rather than conducting any kind of human sacrifice.
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