Dennis Wheatley’s occult influence on heavy metal

Witchsorrow, the London-based doom trio, recently released their seventh album, titled The Devil and All His Works, a phrase that leads directly back to Dennis Wheatley. One of Britain’s great popular writers of the occult, the author merged successfully supernatural fiction and genuine research into forbidden knowledge. And for a band that stately treats doom “as a way of life”, the connection is particularly fitting.

“I think he’s the ultimate doom author, even more than Lovecraft,” says Witchsorrow’s Necroskull. “You feel like the person who wrote it really understands it and knows about magic and the occult, which gives it this really incredible energy.”

This aura of authenticity was central to the appeal Wheatley had for generations and still has. The Devil Rides Out was first published in 1934, and he famously prefaced his account of black magic with a warning that his research had led him to believe the subject involved “dangers of a very real and concrete nature.” He insisted that his characters and situations were fictional while simultaneously presenting his occult details with the confidence of an initiate.

Witchsorrow are certainly not the first to draw on Wheatley’s work as the foundation for their compositions. As for his connection to heavy metal, it started (once again) with Black Sabbath. Their 1970 self-titled debut opened up a whole new music vocabulary, and it was there that the first link to Dennis Wheatley appeared. It was actually the very first song, titled Black Sabbath, of that very first album, that we find a first link to British cult writer.

Here are some tracks directly inspired by or associated with Wheatley’s work.

Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (1970)
Geezer Butler was a fan of Dennis Wheatley’s black-magic novels, and Black Sabbath’s official history explicitly says Wheatley’s work influenced the song. Butler’s frightening bedroom apparition was the other major ingredient.

Witchsorrow – Omnia Finiuntur (2026)
The band’s own discussion confirms that the title of their latest album is taken from Dennis Wheatley’s occult classic The Devil and All His Works. And it takes only a few seconds of the opening track, Omnia Finiuntur, to get a feel for the album’s ritualistic atmosphere: “Into the circle, I fall again / Solitary incantation, my only way / Toward the coven, toward the light / Always upon me, terror of the night”.

Icarus – The Devil Rides Out (1968)
It’s not only doom & gloom, as they say. The British group Icarus, even before Black Sabbath, recorded a single titled The Devil Rides Out, explicitly inspired by the Hammer film of the same name that had just been released, which was adapted from Wheatley’s novel. They even performed it at the film’s London premiere.

Uncoffined – The Devil And The Old Cursed Tree (2013)
Kat Shevil, singer and drummer of the UK death doom band, explicitly said that this song and the full album it it taken from, Ritual Death And Funeral Rites, are based on The Devil Rides Out and, generally, on black masses and satanic sacrifice.

Amulet – The Satanist (2019)
This one is explicitly identified as being Dennis Wheatley-based: the song draws on Wheatley’s 1960 novel The Satanist. The connection is discussed in relation to the lyrics and their literary source.

Black Sabbath – Devil & Daughter (1989)
Black Sabbath again, this time with a song from the Headless Cross album with a different line-up. Its title is clearly taken from Wheatley’s To the Devil – A Daughter. In this instance, though, there is an important caveat: the song itself seems to have been inspired lyrically by the – at times disastrous – relationship between Sharon and Don Arden.

Over the years, the title The Devil Rides Out was subsequently borrowed by many a band, including Carcass, Saxon, Demon and Reverend Bizarre.

What songs did we miss? Let us know in the comment section below.