Psychedelic Lunch

Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Activist Edition,” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!

We’ve seen tock and metal bands onstage, hair flying, as they produce music that rips through our ears with its speed and mercilessness. They are the purveyors of pounding rock, the manufacturers of metal and their music will leave you quaking in its relentless wake.

Of course, when you’re an axe grinding god there are certain stereotypes that come along with the territory. It seems only fair to assume that a guy ripping a brutal guitar solo over the punishing tempo of the drums would be, in effect, brutal himself. With some of the lyrics supporting this perception in metal, that stereotype can’t help but get a little reinforcement.

But, like any stereotype, it fails to hold true in many noteworthy examples. Guys with full sleeve tattoos who sing as though they can channel the voices of a hundred demons go home to their cats at night and settle in for a good cuddle. They participate in campaigns to further animal rights, and some of them even eat plant-based! Like metal Clark Kents, these musicians (though anything but mild mannered) bestow us with their modal mayhem during the day only to help animals by night…or whenever actually.

Geezer Butler

Lyricist and bassist for Black Sabbath, Butler has been vegetarian since childhood after making the connection that meat was animals. He’s spoken out against puppy mills and pet overpopulation and went completely plant-based in his adult years. He told PETA2, “A lot of people that come over to the house, like, for dinner and stuff will be eating what my wife will serve and they won’t even realize that it’s not meat until they’re halfway through the dinner and they can’t believe how good it is once they’ve tried it.”