999,879: Coven — Wicked Woman

Music has long been filled with Satanic references, whether Beelzebub is merely in the world, being a baddie, or directly on the trail of bluesman who owes Lucifer his immortal soul, but it took him a hell of a long time to have music written and performed directly in praise of His Evilness. Specifically, it took him until Coven’s 1969 debut Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls.

Even in terms of rock’n’roll – The Devil’s Music – that’s a long time; nearly fifteen years, depending on your count. Unfortunately for The Dark Lord, it’s also a fair-to-middling record, with about a third of its running time dedicated to a recording of a black mass, which loses its novelty pretty quickly.

Fortunately for Mephistopheles, it contains what should be heralded as one of the best songs the rock canon has to offer, in the form of “Wicked Woman.” It seems like the algorithm must be deducting points for relation to The Archfiend of Hades, since we’ve seen so much Death Metal, GG Allin and Black Eyed Peas here, at the bottom of the pile.

I suppose the “Wicked Woman” isn’t breaking any ground in terms of pushing musical or lyrical boundaries, being a fairly typical, if amphetamized, San Francisco-style psych-rock number with the blues-like description of The Demon Female. It gets style points on the attack, though, as the band plays with angry abandon and opera-trained vocalist Jinx Dawson wails like she might be quite the wicked woman herself.

The next year, Black Sabbath would issue their self-titled debut album, and The Horned One would take his rightful place, permanently in the rock firmament. Satan can’t be held to mediocrity for very long.