Rand Paul’s Entrance Music at CPAC 2013: Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’
March 15th, 2013
credit: Gage Skidmore
In the distant past (see also: the ’80s), heavy metal was referred to as “devil music.” As a pre-teen, socially conservative authority figures warned me that listening to music by Ozzy Osbourne or Black Sabbath could lead me down a path ending in satanism and suicide. To make matters worse, argued my misinformed elders, these songs contained a suggestive technology called backmasking that would brainwash listeners to do heavy metal musicians’ evil bidding.
Times have certainly changed. This week, Republican Senator Rand Paul marched out to deliver his speech at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference with Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” blasting from the public address speakers. Talk radio hosts also frequently use metal riffs in snippets when returning from commercial breaks. Let’s talk about the changing landscape of conservative culture after the jump.
Talk Radio and Metal
Within the past few years, talk radio shows, featuring socially conservative hosts like Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity, began featuring samples of hard rock and heavy metal riffs during broadcasts. The pummeling rhythms of heavy music signify conflict, aggression, and discord. Soldiers often listen to metal to get psyched up for battle. As such, it creates a sense of excitement and rising adrenaline in listeners.
Talk radio hosts have always wanted to maintain a certain controversial edginess. Their broadcasts manage to come across like pirate radio communications while still appealing to the nation’s conservatives. Nowadays, heavy metal is an important part of that formula. It’s easier to transition from an AARP commercial to a furious rant about the EPA when a few seconds of Tool plays in-between.
Hard Rock and Heavy Metal As Campaign Speech Entrance Music
Political speeches, stylistically, follow the WWE format. Before speakers take the podium, songs kick on to warm up the crowd. In decades passed, conservative politicians came out to banjos and steel guitars. Now, they take the stage to back beats and distorted riffs. In fact, AC/DC style hard rock riffs are almost the status quo when it comes to entrance music for political speeches.
Rand Paul, however, took things up a notch by coming out to “Enter Sandman” at CPAC. As far as political entrance music goes, Metallica may be the heaviest choice of all time so far. What’s next? Dimmu Borgir? Mayhem? Cradle of Filth?
While I’m certainly not expecting to some day hear grindcore songs used in similar scenarios, one could imagine future event planners reaching further into the underground of heavy music for entrance music. For example, there are entire sub-genres with extremely heavy riffs and positive, motivating lyrics. Hatebreed, H20, Sick of It All, and Snapcase are examples of this.
Heavy riffs and pulsing back beats fire up crowds, and that’s the bottom line. The socially conservative movement, freshly educated by its new libertarian bedfellows, no longer sees Satan hiding behind every double-bass drum kit. In fact, some social conservatives feel the need to rock, too.
Horns up!
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