Republican candidate Rick Santorum has declared war on heavy metal.
Or rather, that's what thousands of metal fans were fooled into believing over the weekend when they fell for a spoof news story this weekend.
The parody on Tyranny of Tradition (warning: ultra slow load times) described how Santorum had been attacking satanism in heavy metal and blamed it for the corruption of American youth.
The clues were fairly obvious, but it seems many were prepared to believe that Santorum thought Black Sabbath was a new band, or that metal causes lactose intolerance.
"If you listen to the radio today, many of these brand new, so-called heavy metal music bands like Black Sabbath, Venom, The WASP and Iron Maiden use satanic imagery to corrupt the minds of young people," he fictionally said in the parody.
It went on to blame metal for the collapse of traditional values, and that it was behind some of the worst crime in American history - including the formation of Obama's recent health bill. And if any readers still believed it, they would surely have realised by the time it claimed metal caused lactose intolerance.
The parody went on to say the solution to the trouble caused by metal was to slam dance to performers like Michael W. Smith and Pat Boone.
It's kind of amazing that so many fell for this article, but to be honest, we saw the headline and initially had no reason to doubt that a right-wing candidate would have strong views against metal.
Of course, anyone who read the parody should have realised it was a joke, but if you didn't, then here's your heads up that it wasn't real.
