CBS: A CASE OF HEAVY-METAL POISONING?

Everybody has a beef with heavy-metal music these days.

Most rock radio stations refuse to play it. The Parents Music Resource Center’s Tipper Gore says it tells kids that “It’s OK to beat people up.” So many arenas have had problems with heavy-metal concerts that the group’s insurance costs have skyrocketed this past year.

Now heavy metal has such a bad reputation that CBS Records has refused to release a new album by Slayer, a popular young speed-metal band signed to Def-Jam Records, a small New York-based label which has an exclusive distribution deal with CBS. Angered by the CBS move, Def-Jam president Rick Rubin offered the album to Geffen Records, which happily accepted and will now release the record, “Reign in Blood,” later this month.

What got CBS so rattled? The label’s spokesmen refused to say. But insiders speculate that the group’s song lyrics--which are full of vague meditations of death, decay, sadism, severed flesh and insanity--probably had something to do with it. While the lyrics are hardly more explicit than anything you would read in an Edgar Allen Poe story or see in “The Fly,” CBS execs may not be in the mood to tangle with anti-rock crusaders this year.

“It seems pretty hypocritical to me,” said Rubin, who has produced a host of popular rap groups, many signed to Def-Jam. “CBS was real interested when I brought them the band six months ago and told them that someday they’d sell as many records as Ozzy Osbourne or Judas Priest. But then I think they got cold feet after all the lawsuits they had with Ozzy. (A suit charging Osbourne and CBS with contributing to the suicide death of an Indio teen-ager was dismissed in August.)

“Now they don’t want anything to do with this record--they just want it to go away. Yet they always defend Ozzy and Judas Priest (both CBS artists) when people accuse them of having something to do with teen suicides.”

Rubin insists that Slayer’s lyrics are no more inflammatory than “The Exorcist.”

“They tell stories, and they’re the same kind of stories you see in horror films. Frankly, I think kids could care less about the lyrics. They may think they’re cool, or funny, but kids don’t go out and mimic that behavior. Slayer is singing about the same stuff that Black Sabbath was doing 13 years ago.”

The company that comes out looking good here is Geffen, which can take credit (and probably some heat) for standing by a controversial new record. “We knew what we were getting into, but this was a chance to do work with a company (Def-Jam) that we respect and has been involved in a lot of new, exciting music,” explained Geffen president Eddie Rosenblatt, who said the album will have a warning sticker informing parents about possibly “unsuitable language.”

“I’m sure that in these conservative times, the lyrics on this record may bother some people. But we felt this was a record that’s going to appeal to a lot of kids and they should have an opportunity to hear it. People should decide for themselves whether they want to buy it or not--we’re not forcing anyone. We’re more concerned with personal choice than criticism from a few extremists.”