POP/ROCK - July 24, 1990

Brain Can’t Decipher Subliminal Messages: The brain is incapable of deciphering messages recorded backward and cannot consciously hear words masked by music or other sound, a psychologist testified Monday as a suit against the rock band Judas Priest opened its second week of trial in Reno, Nev. “You either hear it or you don’t,” said Donald Lunde of the Stanford University Medical Center. “We don’t have more than one mind up there. It either hears it, it perceives it and it registers it or it doesn’t.” The families of two young fans of the heavy metal group filed suit against the band and CBS Records, claiming subliminal messages in Judas Priest’s 1978 “Stained Class” album drove the young men to enter a suicide pact.