Bloodbath T-shirt Controversy
December 3, 2008 by Scott
With Bloodbath’s new album comes new merch. One of those pieces of merch was a T-shirt that debuted around the 6th of November. The T-shirt titled “Mock The Cross“, the name of the 4th track from The Fathomless Mastery. The T-shirt in questions features Christ upon the cross with a demon puking on his head with snakes and vultures all around. For a detailed image click here.
Now this isn’t the worse T-shirt we have ever seen, nor is the artwork really all that good, but the depiction is obviously enough to upset people and the company that was printing the first round has stopped production due to the owners morals. Sure it is only a T-shirt, but it still offends people and especially Christians. That’s probably what it was meant to do in the first place. That’s what any T-shirt that has a sacrilegious image on it is meant to do.
One ‘former’ Bloodbath fan even commented that he is no longer a fan because of this shirt. So he was a fan before, but obviously never read any of the lyrics to a Bloodbath song. Check out a few lyrics to Mock The Cross below:
In the womb
A sea of vomit
Nurturing the false prophet
His mouth of blasphemy
Spreading forth the creed of the infidelsHis spit on the flaking emblem of Solomon
A schism of confusion weaken the trinity
Foresee the death of the holy alliance
The withering corpse of Christ
Here is a bit from Iesous (also from The Fathomless Mastrery with a blasphemous T-shirt):
Stigma
Fury
Throw him
Bound and gagged upon the soil
The red sun
Burning
Burning
Tear the soul of gods only son
Let’s look at the lyrics to Weak Aside from the Unblessing The Purity Ep:
Our name has seen the future
Headshot target now on god
Pointblank crimson dawn
Spew forth tomorrow’s spawn
Now let’s reach back to 2004’s Bastard Son Of God from Nightmares Made Flesh:
He is hater of the rotten Earth
He is the nova that will drape the sky in woe
We drink from his poisoned water
He is lord of those who dwell bound in sickness
Spitting vomit in the face of faith
Cleansing us who must atone for being weak
We drink from his poisoned water
He is the shadow cast upon those defiled
So this dude was a fan until they put words into graphics? C’mon now, that’s so naive. It’s death metal with anti-religious overtones. If you can’t figure that out then you might want to find a different style of music to listen to. I don;t care what kind of music I listen to, if I dig what the sound is then I look into the sound and try to understand what they are (singing) about. You may not always agree with it, but don’t be so stupid as to act like you didn’t know they went against or were singing about something you didn’t believe in.
Now if anyone knows the band Skrewdriver, then it’s like listening to them and then getting all offended when you see one of their T-shirts with a racist remark or white power propaganda on it. Or liking Slayer until you see the Circle Of Lies T-shirt or Deicide before seeing the cover of Once Upon The Cross. Don’t be so naive.
No one has left a comment because there is not much to comment on. What can be said about this?
I’ll give it a shot. It amazes me that people even listen to this crap. There are so many bands that sound like Bloodbath, and they start to blend together to a point where you can’t even tell the difference between them. You can barely hear the music, or even understand the ’singing’. It’s the cookie monster trying to sing! No wonder metal has gone down the tubes. Just like the rest of society. There are so many untalented bands out there where the lead ’singer’ screams or grunts incomprehensible gibberish into a microphone.
Who can be more ‘rebellious’, more ‘obnoxious’, more ‘repulsive’, more ’shocking’ than the next guy?
Who are they trying to impress? Who can be more satanic, anti-Christian, or vile than the next band? It gets old. It’s not cool, it’s not rebellious, it’s not unique, it sure as hell isn’t interesting. It’s embarrassing and just plain moronic. As if we haven’t seen this bulls!t before, on the cover of devil worshiper Danzig’s 6:66 satan’s child.
Give me a break. Why don’t morons such as the band members of Bloodbath and the other stupid bands in the metal genre grow the hell up.
What’s next? Actual human sacrifices on stage?
Wow…some people should just stick to what they know…and you, J, do not know metal.
Michael Akerfeldt is one of the most talented vocalists in metal. Opeth anyone?
Before you bash a band…do some research. Bloodbath is a “supergroup” with members of other famous metal bands [opeth, Katatonia, and Edge Of Sanity] and the project is meant to be a tribute to old school death metal. Old school death metal is all about shock value and being as brutal as you possibly be.
…Perhaps Jethro Tull has a website you can comment on.
Douche
Btw…gorgoroth already tried to sacrifice someone on stage.
Learn your metal.
Once again…you are a douche
you say this like there isnt a redundancy in christian music. this is an expression of ones stance or even an interest. who are you to condemn anyones art when you dont have even the most of elementary of understandings of it. all christianity gives you right to is justified bigotry and narrowminded ignorace. why ally yourself with something that does your thinking for you?
educate yourself, and you to will see the flaws
What the hell J ???
You call Bloodbath members untalented??? you obviously have no clue about what you are talking about, they are one the most talented song writers in Metal, and btw, Bloodbath is a tribute to death metal of early 90s, you are getting the lyrics and image too serious, get your head out of your ass, it’s just COOL music. what do you listen to please? Trance crap?
(First, I had to look up Danzig before commenting, because I really didn’t know anything about them until I read that faggot J’s comment. When I say “faggot,” I don’t mean it as a gay slur)
J, you’re an idiot. You don’t understand one damn thing about death metal. They’re not satanic in any sense. They do it for shock value; they don’t believe in that. And neither does Danzig. Glenn rejects the belief in any deity, but finds Satan as an interesting character.
You probably don’t even know anything about Satanism either. I’m a Christian, and I love this kind of genre, but I also know quite a bit about Satanism. More than you probably.
To explain the philosophy, I’ll speak from the perspective of one: I am my own God. I don’t believe in any higher deity. Satan is merely a symbol to me, as a release from Christianity’s slavery.
There’s only a few metal bands that mean lyrics like these literally: Gorgroth, Deicide, and Morbid Angel. Well, Deicide frontman Glen Benton is a theistic Satanist, meaning he literally believes in Satan, God, angels, demons, Heaven, Hell, etc, while MA is the type of Satanism that I described before this paragraph, aka atheistic Satanism
Anyway, BB expresses their over-exaggerated hatred for religion with these lyrics. They aren’t “rebellious,” or “Satanic,” they’re atheist. Not atheistic Satanist; just atheists.
Give singing a death metal song yourself, see how long you can go without ripping your vocal cords to shreds.
Oh, and once you read the lyrics for a death metal song a few times, you’ll eventually have it down.
F***ing retard (not meant against mentally challenged people, and I’d say the actual thing before “retard” if I knew I could).
O that’s bullshit… he definitely wasn’t a f*king metal fan to begin with if that offended him. Any real metalhead would understand that a lot of metal is by it’s nature about the ugly side of life, revolutionary, offensive and against organized religion and if they are an intellectual metalhead, they’d know that Jesus and the fairytale land of Ancient Israel he supposedly lived in are myths… I’ve never met a self proclaimed metalhead who was christian/jewish… That’s laughable…
Anyway, you’d have to stare at the damn shirt for a good few seconds to even see what it is. Vital Remains’ Hammer Down The Nails shirt was hella more detailed and offense than this shirt and I’m a proud owner of one!
I wasn’t a big Bloodbath fan before, but I am now.
I would just like to add that J’s douchery still emanates on this post…
I would also like to add that the next 5 people that comment on this will receive a free Godsmack album…courtesy of J’s private music collection.
I just have to comment on this. J, just so you know.. Regardless of your thoughts, Bloodbath’s music is phenomenal and the lyrical content are a masterpiece of truth. In summary, get off the internet, go to church, and waste your life worshipping a false prophet who you will never come to know.