 A death-metal concert performance |
It has taken me years to get up the nerve to write this letter. But today is the first Saturday of the month, a day devoted to Mary, and I have been to confession and Holy Communion. I want to warn your readers about the dangers of heavy metal music, especially black metal and satanic rock. I have in mind groups like Celtic Frost, Slayer, Venom, Possessed, and Merciful Fate. In my opinion, the most destructive music of all is that of King Diamond, who has made several concert tours of Poland.
I began listening to this music when I was eighteen years old. The group Merciful Fate particularly fascinated me. Diamond, who has since left the group to perform on his own, was its lead singer. Everything in this music is perverted. The very name "Merciful Fate" (the group’s lyrics contain satanic messages) is a grotesque irony. God endowed Diamond with an incredible voice, which is, unfortunately, what draws the fans, and it was this that attracted me to him. His two first records Melissa and Don’t Break My Heart were a typical homage to the Evil One, an expression of his war with the Christian faith.
I am cautioning your readers not to listen to these songs or any of the later albums Diamond has recorded; for example, Fatal Portrait and Abigail. Diamond’s voice and music enchanted me. I even acquired translations of his lyrics in Polish. I pored over them and read them to my younger brother and mother. Until then I had been very religious. As a boy I served on the altar and prayed earnestly to Mary. Unfortunately, I replaced her picture in my room with posters of trash-black metal groups.
On Christmas Eve morning, when I was eighteen, I went over to a friend’s to play my first Merciful Fate record. I felt I was doing wrong; after all, it was Christmas Eve, but I did it anyway. That evening I went to sleep and heard a voice inside my head, "I am in you... I am in you." I felt it was the voice of the Evil One. Frightened out of my wits, I was at a loss what to do. It was like a horror movie. I was afraid to tell my mother. I felt terrified and desperately alone in my suffering.
I remember switching on the TV to calm myself. I began watching Midnight Mass, which Pope John Paul II was celebrating at the Vatican. That was the twenty-fourth of December 1988.
After that I began having similar terrifying experiences. I even had one during class at school and had to leave the building. After graduating from high school, I entered the University of Warsaw where I wanted to study Polish Literature; and so, I began to study theater.
In the meantime, my mother had taken me to see a faith healer, who had a practice not far from where we lived. He healed by the laying on of hands. I went to see him several times after that. One day he invited me to visit his home where his congregation lived. I told him I was studying theater. He said that was wonderful, since his Christian group of twenty members also put on plays.
After a few visits to his house, which was located near Lublin, I went to stay there for good. After a year I withdrew from my studies and left my family – my mother, father, and brothers. The year was 1991 and I was twenty years old. In those days in Poland there was no talk yet of religious sects. And so I was unaware of what I was getting myself into. It was here that I met my future wife, who also worshipped King Diamond.
Today I am convinced that it is only due to my wonderful grandmother’s prayers to the Merciful Jesus that, after five years, I got out of that sect. I owe it to her that my two children are safe and sound today. They are baptized and have received their First Holy Communion. Unfortunately, my marriage did not survive, but then we were never married in the Church.
A series of exorcisms, intercessory prayers offered up by members of the Renewal of the Holy Spirit, frequent rosaries, consultations with priests and psychotherapists gradually helped me to function once more in society. Now I try to go to confession once a month, receive Jesus frequently in Holy Communion, and pray the chaplet of Divine Mercy every day at 3 p.m.
Meanwhile my wife became addicted to alcohol and narcotics. It took many long years to bring her out of these addictions and persuade her to seek treatment. Throughout the period of her alcoholism my children and I prayed to Saint Faustina that my wife might be freed from her addictions and come to her senses. She has now been sober for two years.
When I think back and try to understand why I wasted the most beautiful years of my life, why I came to experience such hell, I am reminded of how I was as a teenager, and how gradually, step by step, I distanced myself from the Church and her holy sacraments, and how I took down from the wall that picture of Our Lady of Czestochowa because it did not go with my idols – my long-haired metal heroes. I know now that by listening to King Diamond and Merciful Fate, by reading their satanic messages, I crossed the invisible line separating good from evil, and opened myself up to evil, which then attached itself to me.
Dear readers of (MICHAEL Journal) Love One Another Magazine! When someone tries to talk you into listening to any evil type of music, be it satanic, black metal, King Diamond, or techno, I beg you not to listen to it. Do not even take it into your hands! The music has something about it that even when you listen to it out of mere curiosity, it will instantly draw you in, and then you will need a great deal of will power not to go back to it again.
If this testimony prevents even one person from experiencing what I have had to endure, it will be worthwhile. God be with you!
Adam
Used with the permission of Love One Another Magazine
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