Cover Story
by Iyesha Lynch
Music can speak a language of its own without text.
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Evil influence lurks
behind violent music
Matt Zrust listened to Rob Zombie, a popular death metal artist....
Listening to Korn, a violent, secular music band, Matt Zrust found comfort in the band's hateful lyrics. Korn influenced Zrust, a Multnomah student, to hate his father who had left him when he was seven.
"I can't stand the sight of you," Korn's lyrics read. "I can't stand what you put me through. I can't stand even the thought of you. I can't stand all the things you do."
Zrust imagined his father coming to Costa Rica, where Zrust had lived from age 14 to 20, and hurting or kidnapping his little brother. These thoughts led to daydreams of Zrust beating his father to death with his hands. But at the end of each day, he asked God for forgiveness. He knew the visions were wrong.
"I love music," Zrust said, "but it can become harmful when it becomes our reality. It happened to me."
Miriam Gibby, chair of the music department at Multnomah, said that people seldom realize the psychological and subconscious effects that music has on them. She said eventually the effects of the music will come out somewhere.
"Music has power to control," Mrs. Gibby said. "The problem may be if you find you can't live without it."
"When I wasn't listening, I went crazy," Zrust said. "I would just sit and look at the floor and zone out. Violent images would begin to flash through my head, and I'd hear the music in my head."
"A kid's reasoning isn't as good as an adult's," Mrs. Gibby said. "The younger they are, the music becomes their reality. If they [youths] say it doesn't effect them, they're not seeing the reality. What goes in must come out."
Since Zrust was a child, he had been naturally attracted to stimulating music. His mother, an opera singer in Costa Rica, often took Zrust to her concerts. The climactic parts, he said, always excited him.
His dad also listened to violent music such as Bad Religion, Megadeath and Metallica. In the seventh grade, Zrust began to listen to the same hard music his father had listened to.
Listening to music became an easy way for him to escape from the world around him and from who he was, a person he had grown to hate.
"Music is an escape for many people," Mrs. Gibby said. "If they are having a hard time with life, it helps to shut the world out and numb the pain. It puts you in another world."
"I was a fat, unattractive, socially inept kid," Zrust said, "with no dad, no friends, an autistic brother, an attention-deficit brother and an opera singer for a mom."
Along with music, he made up movies in his head. He would often lie in bed hours at a time, just listening. If he wasn't outside, he was most likely in his room, listening to music.
At age 15, Zrust started to get to know God. He didn't want to listen to the same music as before because of the way it presented God. But he couldn't avoid music, and he began to listen to violent music again.
The influence the music had on Zrust became stronger. He became more and more depressed and sought to lighten the depression by getting deeper into his music.
One day after breaking up with a girlfriend, Zrust went to the kitchen and picked up a knife to kill himself.
Metallica's song, "Unforgiven," played in the background: "Won't see what might have been. Never free. Never me. So I dub thee unforgiven."
He felt no anger but sat calmly caressing the blade.
Suddenly, as though waking up from a dream, he realized what he was doing and how the music was affecting him. He put down the knife but still listened to the same music.
Another time while in bed, Zrust listened to a song from the band Pantera called "Becoming." He felt himself shaking and opened his eyes to find his fists clenched with fingernail marks in his hands.
He looked up the lyrics to the song and learned that it was written with the idea of becoming stronger than Christ through Satan's power.
"I'm becoming more than a man," the lyrics read. "More than you ever were. Driven and burning to rise beyond Jesus. I'm born again with snake's eyes becoming Godsize. I the unlord."
"The music itself isn't as impactful," Mrs. Gibby said. "Music can speak a language of its own without text. It can create moods of happiness, sadness, tension or calmness."
But she said that in her opinion, without text, music can't go into the psyche and cause evil effects.
After reading the lyrics and finding the true intent of the song, Zrust picked up the weight set and broke the cassette tapes. Later he told his friend, from whom he had borrowed the tapes, that the music was not something he should be listening to.
Breaking the tapes set Zrust on a path to freedom. However, he still struggled with the daydreams associated with listening to music. He couldn't listen and talk at the same time. The music distracted him so that he would stop talking and start visualizing. The fantasies of breaking and killing began to become fantasies that focused on more realistic activities. Then they almost completely stopped.
He began to find that he enjoyed life more than he enjoyed his fantasies.
After coming to MBC, Zrust wanted to be free of all his music; so he sold his CDs.
As with any addiction, Gibby said, the best way to overcome it is complete abstinence. But abstinence needs to be matched with good mentoring and counseling. Somewhere in the person may be an addictive bent. If he doesn't get help, he may fill the space with something else. He needs to fill his life with something healthy. Zrust filled that void with Christ. No longer is the envisioning a means of escape.
He said he often pictures himself with Christ, being held in his arms or sitting at his feet. Then he looks up at him and says, "Thank you."
"As far as influence," Zrust said, "[Music] is like lust, alcohol or food when you let it take control. No influence besides his Spirit would he be impressed with.
"I'm not willing to let music control me," he said. "It still can, by all means, but God has given me a lot of strength to run away."
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