MORAL PANIC MONTH #1: Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls, by Coven (1969)
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Type of Media: Music Album
Look at that title. Just take it in. Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls. Only a couple years after heavy metal’s birth and already you get the best name for a metal album ever. Okay, sure, technically it’s a psychedelic rock album, but that title is the perfect introduction to the band Coven, a female-fronted rock group that draped itself in witchery and diabolical occultism before it was cool. We’re here, we sound like Jefferson Airplane holding a sacrificial knife, get used to it.
Well, maybe that description would have been more accurate when this album released in the late 60s and Coven was proper scary. Now Witchcraft Destroys Minds sounds more silly than threatening, falling in the same bracket of cheesy devil worship that metal band Ghost occupies. However, like Ghost’s music, it’s still a fun listen. Lyrics describe witches getting revenge on their oppressors, pacts with Satan coming home to roost, and the aristocracy of Hell. A few of the songs, like White Witch of Rose Hall and Wicked Woman, have particularly nice grooves that will get your head bobbing. Definitely the biggest draw of this album, though, is lead singer Jinx Dawson, whose powerful voice vacillates between operatic singing and bluesy wailing.
As good as the music is, however, I have one piece of advice if you’re going to listen to Witchcraft Destroys Minds: stop after the song Portrait at about the 32 minute mark. The last 13 minutes of the album, a track titled Satanic Mass, is supposedly a real recording of an occult Black Mass where a woman pledges herself to the devil. Of course this isn’t true, as everyone is clearly reciting lines and the priest ministering the service overacts like a high school theater kid channeling Gary Oldman. The problem is it’s long and boring, and a terrible way to cap off an album with so much good energy. Unless you’re willing to sit through the whole 13 minutes for a few nuggets of unintentional comedy (“NOW! KISS! THE GOAT!”) just avoid it, especially if you’re a Christian who’s uncomfortable with blasphemy.
Without Satanic Mass, actually, Coven may have been able to avoid the trouble they quickly got into. A year after Witchcraft Destroys Minds released, Esquire published an issue titled “Evil Lurks in California” which drew a connection between growing interest in the occult and the Manson Family murders, and specifically called out Coven for promoting Satanism. Coven’s record label dropped them, making them early casualties in the American Satanic Panic that would come to full fruition in the 1980s. To redeem themselves, Coven released another album in 1971 that toned down the devilry, and actually made a popular hit with the song One Tin Soldier. By 1974 they had enough cachet to go back to their roots with their third album Blood on the Snow, but by then their occult image wasn’t enough to hook people anymore when they were competing against bands with heavier sounds.
So, why did Coven get hit so hard for their evil themes when other bands like Black Sabbath (once billed as “England’s answer to Coven” in a 1970 Rolling Stone article) thrived? My theory is that, while other bands could claim they were just using witchcraft and devil worship as creative themes, Coven actually meant it, and that scared people. Jinx Dawson still claims she was brought up in a wealthy family that followed the Spiritualist movement. She says her family’s mansion had a library filled with occult books from around the world, and Coven’s live shows involved real magic rituals. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but it’s been her story for over 45 years at this point. That makes me want to believe.
Anyway, if you like psych rock or early heavy metal and you haven’t heard Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls, give it a listen as it's an oft-overlooked piece of rock history. Fans of Ghost in particular will probably find a lot to like here.