Catholic Seton Hall Broadcasts Periphery “Blood Eagle”, Which Calls For Torture and Genocide of Christians

At least 32 times between September 30, 2019 and November 25, 2020, WSOU, the radio station of Catholic Seton Hall University has aired “Blood Eagle” by the band Periphery. Blood Eagle is a technique of torture and execution, reported since the middle ages to have been employed by Vikings against Christians. It involves placing a person face down, slicing open the back and breaking each rib with an ax. The ribcage is then pulled away from the spine and the lungs are removed from the chest cavity and spread like wings while the victim is alive. Further torture proceeds from there.

The station has regularly aired material promoting Satanism, the occult, political violence, blasphemy, anti-Christian hatred, genocide against Christians and heinous violence against women and children. In response to Seton Hall’s silence and inaction, a report to the Pope was drafted and provided to the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, in October of 2019. The report was forwarded by the Nuncio’s office in 2019 to Newark’s Cardinal Joseph Tobin, who chairs Seton Hall’s Board of Trustees, the group that sets the university’s policies. Since then, with the Cardinal’s knowledge, WSOU has continued to regularly air material of this nature. A large archive of records and recordings has been accumulated. The Cardinal’s Priest Secretary told our group face to face recently that the Cardinal deemed himself unable to stop the satanic broadcasting. When pressed for a reason, he stated “It’s complicated.” No one accepts that Joseph Tobin as Chair of the Seton Hall’s Board of Trustees, the group that sets the university’s policies, and as a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, is unable to bring an end to this.

One of many available recordings of WSOU broadcasts of “Blood Eagle” is provided below, along with lyrics and a link to the official YouTube video for the song. The album artwork posted with WSOU online streaming of the song is shown at the beginning of this post. It depicts Satan and is titled “Hail Stan” in reference to Satan. Our archive includes records of WSOU broadcasting Periphery material 94 times since September of 2019.

The ideology underpinning this type of violently anti-Christian hatred has become the predominant theme among many types of “metal” music. At it’s root is a fusion of Satanism and Paganism, especially Nordic “Odinism”, Germanic “Asatru” and modern derivatives, that seeks with varying degrees of aggressiveness to reject or eliminate from the western world non-native ethnic, racial and religious influences, asserting the dominance of pre-Christian pagan values, ethnic and racial makeup and religious beliefs. Although too complex an issue to be explored in depth here, a few key points about where this world view is found and how it has been asserted are in order.

Adherents to these forms of ethnic paganism include terrorist Anders Breivik, a self proclaimed Odinist, who killed 77 in the Oslo/Utoya attack, his disciple Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch Mosque shooter who killed 51, Varg Vikernes, a Norwegian black metal musician, hate group leader, convicted murderer and serial church arsonist who had Breivik’s 1500 page manifesto in his possession prior to the Oslo/Utoya attacks and Holden Matthews, an American aspiring black metal musician and convicted serial church arsonist who sought to emulate Vikernes. Atomwaffen Division, which was until recently the most dangerous US domestic terror organization, shares similar objectives, emphasizing the Satanic side of the ideology. Atomwaffen is German for atomic weapons. The black metal church arsonists Vikernes and Matthews have at least at times fused the Nordic pagan and Satanic aspects of the ideology into their public identities and world views. Several Atomwaffen Division members have been uncovered in the US armed forces. The group has been linked to at least five murders and had plans for attacks on the water supply as well as nuclear power plants. They sought to start a civil war. Their primary recruiting tool was black metal music. As of May of 2020, the group has been decapitated through arrests and is now reemerging, utilizing Atomwaffen Division imagery, primarily under the identity of the National Socialist Order. According to Vice News, a black metal festival in Ukraine last December was the largest neo-Nazi networking event of the year, worldwide.

Attempts are made by proponents of metal music to draw distinctions between National Socialist or Nazi oriented subgenres, which are universally recognized as dangerous, and other types that are deemed merely “satanist” or “pagan” and therefore benign. Amongst the segment that avoids the label of “extremist” are bands like Periphery, whose music openly calls for a Christian genocide and promotes church burning and Darkthrone, which collaborated with serial church arsonist Varg Vikernes and backmasked the words “In the name of God, let the churches burn” into a song written for them by the church arsonist himself prior to his conviction. The point is that bands promoting genocide against Christians and church burning are deemed “not extreme” because their openly stated hostilities are against Christians, and not overtly racist or Nazi in nature. These and many other similar bands are played on Catholic Seton Hall University’s radio station.

Looking more closely at the message conveyed in Periphery “Blood Eagle”, which has been in ongoing heavy rotation at WSOU for a year since the Nuncio and Cardinal were informed, we see the goals espoused by these extremist organizations. Consider the lyrics: “We come for war, king of the north and Norse”, “Surrender not enough, The Christian seed will sing amongst the soil of trees”, “Rip the body from the bone now”, “Barbaric to the core, A storm brewing, all our doing for [the Nordic pagan god and father of Thor,] Odin’s at the door, The spoils are not enough, We’ll let ‘em bleed, The moon takes everyone tonight”, “For the abandoned children of Christ have been laid to waste on the shelf”. This song, written mostly in present and future tense, is about a Nordic pagan genocide against Christians. Although some of these words were edited out of the WSOU broadcast, it is clear that Seton Hall’s radio station is airing and marketing the material of a viciously and dangerously anti-Christian band.

What are we to make of a record industry that mainstreams this? What should we as Christians think when Google and YouTube allow the video for this genocidally anti-Christian song to be played? It currently has 2.5 million views. What are the standards? BBC News states “Black metal music often contains references to Satanism and pagan beliefs. Some extremists within the genre, like Vikernes, are also proponents of white nationalism.” Herein lies a key part of the answer. Mainstream secularists no longer consider Satanic or anti-Christian pagan beliefs to be extreme. To them, they’re just other religions, minority religions that deserve special care and respect. While so many of our churches burn, hate is not acknowledged as hate, extremism is not recognized as extreme and violence is not called out as violent when it’s anti-Christian. Defending the dangerously sick anti-Christian “Satanism and pagan beliefs”, considered norms of the genre by the BBC, CNN asserts “But while there are subcategories of black metal that express racist or neo-Nazi views, such extremist views aren’t representative of the whole genre or the black metal community.” What is foundational to the genre, as stated by those who founded it, and what is representative of the majority of it’s contributors is open, aggressive hostility to Christianity. In our society today, that gets a pass from those who set the prevailing standards, and to these standards, the liberal side of the Catholic Church submits. Although proponents of black metal hold a range of views on the degree of violence against Christians that is justifiable or warranted, satanic and pagan hostility to and hatred of Christianity is so common in the “metal” scene that even the secular media no longer considers it extreme.

This antipathy to Christianity amongst the genre and its adherents has been put into practice through, for example, many dozens of church arsons around the world since the 90s. Norway now has a cottage industry providing black metal fans with tours of sites where churches were burned by the genre’s musicians and followers. The BBC states there were at least 50 burned in Norway in the name of black metal.

Commonly, the press and recording industry give extremists a pass when they deny extremist views. Shown above is the band Mayhem. Drawing the attention of federal law enforcement and the DHS, Mayhem’s 2017 US tour was marketed with a church arson theme and was dedicated to the satanic music they recorded decades earlier with serial church arsonist, murderer and hate group leader Varg Vikerness on the album De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. The album was made during the period of the church burnings. Mayhem’s drummer Jan Axel Blomberg is shown above wearing a Nazi SS coat similar to one worn by SS officer Reinhard Heydrich. Catholic Seton Hall University has aired “The Sepertine Offering” on multiple occasions, a direct call to satanic worship by the openly satanic band Dimmu Borgir, on which Blomberg played drums.

So what are we to make of Seton Hall’s willingness to promote ideologies that are diametrically opposed, diabolically and often violently, to Christianity? Are they simply faithless secularists, mindlessly or consciously going with the flow of a sick society? Is this just the product of 34 years of profound incompetence from priests and PhDs? Has it become a liberal Catholic virtue for a Church institution to publicly promote Satanism? Or has something even more malevolent taken root? We’ll understand better as this unfolds. Whatever it is, their ability to push this on the outside world in America’s largest media market through WSOU is coming to an end as growing public awareness is leaving Cardinal Tobin in an increasingly untenable position.

On October 8, 2020, 13 suspects were arrested for plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. According to FoxNews, the group had “previously discussed taking over the state Capitol building and staging a weeklong series of televised executions of public officials… ‘They were to take hostages, execute tyrants and have it televised,’ court documents read. ‘It would take about one week and that no one is coming out alive’… Another plan involved storming the building, locking it and setting it ablaze with lawmakers inside.”

Among the suspects is anarchist Brandon Caserta. In addition to the black and red anarchist flag visible behind Caserta in both tweets below, the second of the tweets shows a flag with horizontal stripes and the letter P. This flag includes the logo for, you guessed it, the “Blood Eagle” metal band Periphery.

Watch this video of Brandon Caserta. He was arrested for plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In this video he poses in front of an anarchist flag and calls police "a violent gang" and "enemies". He’s an anarchist who hates government and police. pic.twitter.com/gYxaDQXcIj

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 8, 2020

The genocidal “Blood Eagle” song is the second on the Periphery IV: Hail Stan album. The third is “Chvrch Bvrner”, which includes the lyrics

We’ll burn them ’til the end
Cross on top of it
Men bow down and snap the neck for it
Hang ’em high
The population in a rack now

The similarities between the music and the ideas espoused by the group of domestic terrorism suspects is striking. Bloody executions. Killing them all. Burning them.

Here’s how Periphery incites violence, mocks our Christian faith and markets “Chvrch Bvrner” on its website?

But it doesn’t stop there. Caserta is wearing a Hate Eternal t-shirt in the image above. This is another band that’s been played many times on Catholic Seton Hall’s radio station. Recordings of their broadcasts of Hate Eternal’s “The Victorious Reign” and “I Monarch” are provided below along with lyrics. “The Victorious Reign” proclaims “We are the glorious order, Bound together by blood and by faith”, “Are we the vessels of death?”, “Heretical in its shape, is it profane?”, “Devotees to the cause, sacrilegious in its form” and “Affiliates of an allegiance, are we the blasphemous creed?”.

Hate Eternal’s “I Monarch” asserts “In this being, in flesh, There can be no absolution” and “Those who dare to oppose me, Death! Thou shalt die!”

Views such as these are commonly expressed by many groups Seton Hall’s radio station has been airing for decades. Another among countless examples is Amon Amarth’s “For Victory or Death”, which was aired by WSOU on 11/21/20. A recording of the broadcast is available here. The lyrics include the following.

Again we’ll feed the wolves
And then vengeance will be ours
We’ll split their skulls and spill their guts
Upon the frozen ground
Yeah, we’ll never kneel again
Not to deity nor men
Now they’ll taste our bitter hate
What’s owed will be repaid
So raise the flag once more
And the eagle will be fed
Once again we march to war
For victory or death
They arrived with talk of hvitekrist
(Note: hvitekrist is “white Christ”, Jesus Christ)
By force they wanted us to kneel
With their swords held to our throats they preached
But we will make them pay we’ll take their lives away

WSOU adopted this extreme music format in 1986, just months after Theodore McCarrick became responsible for Seton Hall University as the new Archbishop of Newark. Seton Hall and Cardinal Tobin have failed to grasp that the McCarrick era and the values that went with it must now come to an end. This is a serious disgrace to Christ’s Church. Many souls are being turned against the faith. We call on faithful bishops, priests and Catholics to stand with us in bringing this to a prompt and permanent end.

After reviewing the WSOU broadcast recording and YouTube video for “Blood Eagle”, let us know in the comments section what you think about all of this. We especially welcome your thoughts on Cardinal Tobin’s role in enabling this kind of music to be promoted on the public airwaves in northern New Jersey and New York City.

The official YouTube video for “Blood Eagle”, with all lyrics shown, is available here.