These philosophical dilemmas are those on which Abrahamic theology has taken a clear and rigid stance, but what happens when someone who masquerades as good does something incredibly evil? What about the inverse, when someone who is apparently evil does something incredibly good?
You needn't look far to find examples of these dynamics, and Twin Temple presents a fascinating case study of this conundrum.
A self-described “satanic doo-wop” group from Los Angeles, Twin Temple make satanic and occult iconography a core part of their music and performance. They go so far as to call their shows “satanic orgies.” For a tour they are doing with Danzig, which comes through Irving's Pavilion at the Toyota Music Factory on Friday, they will provide a “satanic baptism” to the first 10 people who show up to their merch booth.
Twin Temple’s presence oozes with iniquity, to the point where even the most anodyne of greetings become devilish: “Just another sinister day in sunny LA,” says vocalist Alexandra James, who is on the Zoom call with husband and bandmate Zachary James. Throughout the interview, the Jameses give other answers like, “I am doing most evil” and “[They are] doing the devil’s work,” obviously subverting traditional interview answers like, “I am doing good” and “They are doing the Lord’s work.”
From the get-go, the band embodies a defiance of Isaiah 5:20, which says, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.” Because to Twin Temple, everything evil is good. And everything good is evil. But since evil is not such a bad thing to them, they’re not exactly averse to what many of us consider the essence of good. So then, would evil and good both work in tandem with one another? See, it’s dicey.
But the simpler (and correct) answer is that Twin Temple sees good and evil as artificial constructs, and that belief is what informs much of the band’s music and identity.
Of course, the thing people are probably going to take away from their story is, “Whoa, they’re satanic? Why?”
“Zack and I, growing up in America, have definitely always felt like outsiders for one reason or another,” says Alexandra James. Much of this, she says, had to do with misogyny and racism (Alexandra’s father is Korean and her mother is British).
“I was always othered. I was always on the other side of the fence. I’ve always been called ‘witch,’ ‘whore,’ ‘freak’ [and] ‘devil worshiper,’” she continues. “Satanism is really about self-empowerment, so it’s really about donning the mantle of that which is feared and taking it back. So it’s like, ‘Yeah, I am a satanic witch who drinks blood.’ It’s fun to kind of play with people’s expectations, and it’s fun to kind of push buttons.
“That, and I love a good cape,” she adds with a laugh.
But not everyone finds it funny.
After the Los Angeles Times ran a 2018 profile of the band under the headline, “A new generation of L.A. Satanists finds community in blasphemous times,” conspiracy theorist Alex Jones shined a spotlight on the band. This came after Glenn Beck’s The Blaze ran a Jan. 7, 2018, story titled, “L.A. Times article suggests Trump is driving people into Satanism.”
Jones read the story to his viewers on his InfoWars show the following day. Then came a deluge of negative attention directed at Twin Temple.
“It was hellish,” Alexandra James recalls, without any of the chipper irony with which she greeted us earlier. “As a kid growing up, I thought, ‘All my heroes, at one point or another had their records burned. They had their lives threatened.’ If you look at all the rock ‘n' roll heroes, from Ray Charles to Frankie Lymon to Fats Domino getting his life threatened ... I always thought, ‘That’s the coolest fucking thing in the world.’ And that’s what I want to do: I want to rattle the cages of the old guard. But when it actually happened to us, and we have that firsthand perspective of what it’s like, it was pretty intense. We got so many death threats that it actually crashed our email.”
The harassment only escalated from there, the Jameses says. Alexandra says that incensed demonstrators found out where the couple lived and barricaded their front door with Bibles, which prevented them from being able to leave through that door. They eventually moved because of the precise nature of the threats and targeted harassment.
While the band describes the experience as “mentally and emotionally draining,” their resolve to blaspheme has only intensified.
“In the latest record we’re dropping [God Is Dead], we’ve definitely doubled down on the blasphemy,” Alexandra says. “It’s actually just hardened us into more willful versions of ourselves.”
Upping the ante on this heresy is quite a tall order, seeing as previous songs from the band include “Lucifer, My Love,” “Satan’s a Woman” and “I’m Wicked.”
While bands with similar thematic proclivities tend to gravitate toward the styles of Mercyful Fate and Deicide, Twin Temple have a musical style traditionally associated with an age of innocence. The outrage du jour of Satan’s likeness infiltrating pop performances by Doja Cat and Sam Smith has nothing on the assault Twin Temple is making on your local Johnny Rockets jukebox.
Still, the satanic sock hop aesthetic is not just gimmickry for the band. They draw heavily from inspiration of 1950s and 1960s rock and pop stalwarts such as Link Wray and The Drifters, as well as the game-changing instrumental prowess of Wrecking Crew members such as Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye and Leon Russell.
Twin Temple’s affinity for and encyclopedic knowledge of this music is such that gimmickry doesn’t even come to mind. Obviously, the stark juxtaposition between Satan and doo-wop is part of the band’s elevator pitch (it got you to read this story, didn’t it?), but beneath that lies an unquestionable artistic substance.
And beneath that, lies a philosophical conundrum: who embodies goodness and who embodies evil? Is it the satanic doo-wop group whose only infraction is making blasphemous music, or is it the group of religious extremists who threatened them with bodily harm? What makes Alex Jones, a man who opened Sandy Hook families up to targeted harassment and death threats, qualified to pull virtuous rank?
Twin Temple muddies these arbitrary lines between good and evil, and they do it quite effectively, taking power away from the word “evil” by flagrantly masquerading under its essence. And you can’t conduct that masquerade without a good cape. Or an evil one.
