Glen Benton is the face of Satanic death metal. Literally… having branded an inverted cross on his forehead in his early days of fronting Tampa’s Deicide. Across his 35-year crusade, Glen has riled up countless Christians, but also animal rights activists – after he shot a squirrel during an interview with the NME in 1992, he received death threats, and a show in Stockholm was bombed.
A few years later, Republican senator Bob Dole condemned the Florida death metal scene for threatening to “undermine our character as a nation”. Glen’s also a 56-year-old father of two, and speaks of the myriad scrapes he’s ended up in with the flippancy of a man who has learned not to take things too seriously.
BE WHO YOU’RE BORN TO BE
“I was always referred to as ‘the evil little bastard’ in my family. I just fell into it, and it’s the persona I’ve had ever since I was a little kid, through school and through everything else. I don’t even really know why, but do I get off on raising eyebrows and ruffling feathers? Fuck yeah, I do! Fifty-six years old and I still love getting a reaction out of folks. Most kids rebel, and I wanted to fight the powers.”
YOU DON’T NEED DOGMA TO BE A GOOD PERSON
“Religion is a three-legged dog, and it’s on its way out. I think people know how to treat each other, and don’t need a book full of bullshit to tell them how to do it. I think we’re all learning as a species to not step on each other’s toes and who are the toe-steppers. We all know who the players in the game are.”
USE WHAT YOU KNOW
“When I was eight years old and forced against my will to participate in the Christmas play at the church my mother was a Sunday school teacher at, I was singing at the front of the church thinking, ‘How did I get myself into this shit?’ My father’s side of the family were Catholic and my mother’s Lutheran, so I got the worst of both worlds. It’s beaten into me, so I can’t sing about anything else. If I try to sing about other things, I draw a complete blank. I let the universe speak through me, and if I have to force it, it just won’t come.”
THE 80S FLORIDA METAL SCENE WAS AN ARMS RACE
“Back then, we were all trying to define our own sounds and images. I don’t wanna say there was unfriendly competition, but I don’t wanna say there was friendly competition either. We were all competing for the front seat. It all started with Savatage and Nasty Savage. You had the California thrash thing going on with Possessed and we wanted to outdo that. My goal was to be heavier, vocally especially.”
KNOW WHEN TO QUIT
“I didn’t think playing shows with rotting meat as part of our set-up was gonna cause that much of a shitstorm. Within three shows of that stuff I had the authorities bearing down on me, so it was a very short-lived moment in Deicide history.”
IMPULSES CAN BE HONEST
“I think I was only 22 when I burned the inverted cross into my forehead. The spirit moved me, man! To this day, I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, but I knew that I had been christened Catholic as a child, and I felt that the best way to take care of that would be my symbolic way of taking that Catholic mark off of my skin. I’ve always been that kid in the picture who’s got that twisted look and the smile on his face, and when I got to an age where I could start being me, I just started being me. Now that my two sons are both grown and off in the world, I find myself back to being that guy again, the guy that branded the cross on his forehead.”
BALANCING MUSIC WITH FATHERHOOD IS TOUGH
“I don’t think people realise, because I don’t speak too much about my personal life, but all the things in the past where we have had to cancel tours and people have pointed their fingers, these were all done in the name of my kids. When I had to get custody of my youngest son he was stolen from me and taken out of state, and I had to go get him and bring him home. I was a single guy raising him by myself and a lot of people don’t understand this shit, on top of being who I am and doing what I do.”
KEEP IT SIMPLE
“I learned that the most simplistic ideas are some of the greatest, and that simplicity is the key to rock’n’roll. People want to be entertained, and I want to write music that people can kick the shit out of each other to, not where you have to sit there and figure it all out. We’re not Pink Floyd, for god’s sake.”
PREPARE TO BE SENSATIONALISED
“Senator Bob Dole made mention of us, and I came home from the supermarket and there was a news truck sitting on my front yard. They wanted my reaction to Bob Dole’s reaction to somebody else’s fucking reaction, and I told them to get the fuck off my property.”
NOT ALL PRESS IS GOOD PRESS
“[A bomb went off at our show in Stockholm in 1992], but I’ve blown up bigger shit in my backyard, and there was overreaction from the authorities and the press that meant I didn’t get to do my gig. The fans got the end of the poop stick on that one.”
FIND YOUR FAMILY, AND YOUR SENSE OF HUMOUR
“[Drummer] Steve Asheim has been in this band with me for nearly 40 years, and we have smoked a lot of weed together, that’s for sure. I was going through my pictures the other day and I found this one of Steve maybe a year after we met, when he was 16 years old and I was 18. We know how to make each other laugh, we yell at the television together when we’re on tour.
We’re a couple of old angry yard gnomes. Steve was always the mediator back in the day, and I felt bad for him because he was always put in the middle of the horseshit that we had to put up with back then. Now he doesn’t have to, because we’ve made this a very harmonious thing where there’s not a negative word or anyone feeling hurt. If you can’t laugh at this shit, you will throw yourself off a building.”
I WON’T BACK DOWN ON RELIGION JUST TO APPEASE PEOPLE
“I think what’s important is just being true to one’s self and finishing what you started. I’m not gonna bail out of who and what I am just to placate people who can’t enjoy it for what it is. I’m not singing about what you should believe in, it’s about me. It’s not your agony, it’s not your pain, and I can’t defend my sickness. Enjoy it if you want to. The great thing about this world is we can change the channel. I don’t like to watch the news because I feel like I’m being stabbed to the death, so I don’t watch the news! It’s fucking simple. If you don’t like Deicide, do me a favour: turn it off.”
THE HEAT WILL MOVE OFF YOU
“I thought there was a real parenting problem going on in Norway [when the church burnings and murders happened in the black metal scene], but in the United States those guys didn’t equal an empty pickle jar. As far as the religious right here in the States goes, Marilyn Manson took those off my back.”
METAL NEEDS ITS CHARACTERS
“I was a huge Ronnie James Dio fan, as well as an Ozzy one. The business right now really needs people with personalities. All the greats are dying off and we need more people who can go out there and shake people up. There was a moment when there was too much music to be consumed, and there’s so much out there that really you can’t separate anything. That’s why I’m saying you need those guys, your Ozzys and Rob Halfords and Lemmys who are not afraid to be out there.”
GIVING A SHIT IS OVERRATED
“When you get to my age, you really get this really strong, profound ‘I don’t give a fuck about anything’ energy. I don’t chase other people’s happiness. I’ve already raised two kids who are off in the world, so now the fucking ATM is closed, and I’m back to being ruthless Glen again. My parents are dead, everybody in my family is dead, the moral police don’t give a fuck about me anymore, so I have no one to answer to. I am an evil empty nester.”
Banished By Sin is out now via Reigning Phoenix. Deicide play Bloodstock in August.
