Metal Band Bills Pentagon for Guantanamo Music
WASHINGTON – Canadian industrial metal band Skinny Puppy’s music is aggressive, abrasive and in-your-face. But the group’s founder doesn’t think it should be used as a weapon of war.
Skinny Puppy’s cEvin Key says he has sent the Pentagon a bill for $660,000 after being told that guards at Guantanamo Bay had used the band’s music to torment prisoners.
“To some people it could be a terrible nightmare, but to others it’s just a creative, artistic endeavor that sort of plays with dark writings,” he told Canada’s CTV News on Wednesday.
Mr. Key said the band is considering suing the Defense Department for using a Skinny Puppy song to torment detainees at the military base in Cuba.
“I am not only against the fact that they’re using our music to inflict damage on somebody else, but they are also doing it without anybody’s permission,” Mr. Key said in the interview.
Mr. Key said he was alerted to the use of Skinny Puppy’s music by a former guard at Guantanamo Bay who is also a fan of the band. Pentagon officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. has used music as a weapon of war for years.
In 1989, U.S. forces blasted heavy metal music to disorient Panama dictator Manuel Noriega before his surrender during the American invasion of his country. U.S. forces have used blaring music in detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Skinny Puppy is the latest in a long line of bands to challenge the U.S. military’s use of its music.
Musicians from Rage Against the Machine, Massive Attack and other groups have condemned reports that their music has been used against prisoners.
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich called the military’s use of his band’s music “bizarre.”
“If there are people that are dumb enough to use Metallica to interrogate prisoners, you’re forgetting about all the music that’s to the left of us,” he said in a 2008 interview on MSNBC. “I can name, you know, 30 Norwegian death metal bands that would make Metallica sound like Simon and Garfunkel.”
That same year, Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine told an audience that they U.S. should level Guantanamo Bay, but keep once cell for former President George W. Bush to blast his band’s music, according to the Associated Press.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/0...ntanamo-music/
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