Remember backmasking? Big cause celebre in the Seventies and Eighties. The supposed practise of inserting subliminal messages into music that can only be clearly and consciously deciphered when played backwards. I think the first "instance" of this - or, at least, the first famous one - was the supposed presence of the backmasked message "Paul is dead" on a Beatles track.


Meet Idris Mohammed. Idris appears to be terrified of most modern pop culture, seeing it as a sinkhole of Satanic depravity. Idris has therefore come to save us from the horrors of backmasking, which are far more prevalent than we - or the courts, who tend not to uphold backmasking-related cases - thought.

Take Michael Jackson. Idris' careful listening to his vile oeuvre confirms that "Beat It" was, indeeed, the work of the devil:

Forward: '(indecipherable gibberish) so beat it!'

Reverse: 'I do believe it was Satan in me.'

Forward: 'You better run, you better do what you can, don't wanna see some blood don't be a macho man.'

Reverse: 'S-a-t-a-n. S-a-y (indecipherable gibberish) People all worship.'

"Man in the Mirror" just clinches it for the dark side of the non-child-molesting I'm-naturally-this-chalky-colour King Of Pop:

Forward: 'I'm starting with the man in the mirror, I'm asking if he'll change his way.'

Reverse: 'Come on. Yeah Satan, yeah, just like me exact.'

Idris pounces on this like the fucking Batman; "Michael Jackson is probably the most successful musician in history, but does he hold a dark secret? It is interesting to note that many major musicians have had close ties with Aleister Crowley, a Satanist well known to the occult. Michael Jackson's 'Dangerous' album (right) has the face of an old man in a suit (bottom right hand corner), fitting the description of Crowley himself. The cover of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper has many faces and one of them looking similar to Crowley."

The Rolling Stones - whose works include giveaways like "Sympathy for the Devil" and the album title THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST are, according to intrepid Idris, "much more subtle. They use particular sound frequencies to arouse certain emotions in people. At one large American concert it is reported that during one experiment they aroused people to a violent mood which resulted in five murders that night."

Top BAD WORLD backmask is the one Idris "found" in The Eagles' "Hotel California".

Forward: 'There were voices down the corridor, thought I heard them say, welcome to the hotel California.'

Reverse: 'Yeah Satan, he organized, oh, he organized his own religion. Yeah, when he knows he should, how nice it was delicious, he puts it in a vet he fixes it for his son which he gives away.'

Note how the backmasked version would appear to be fully ten seconds longer than the forward version. Damn clever, those Satanic hippies.

Warren Ellis
Southend, England
October 30, 2000