The Ballad of Gitmo Bay: How a Drowning Pool song became an anthem of torture
Please forgive the groan-worthy pun, but the news that music was being used as a method of torture at Guantanamo Bay struck a chord with millions of people.
It’s bizarre, but that’s one of the parts of the American response to 9/11 that stays with people the most. Not the sleep deprivation and all of the unimaginable goddamn physical violence, not even the fact that people were being tortured at all. No, the part that really stayed in the public conscience was the fact that, as part of their sensory overload, they played music at a punishingly loud volume. Everything from Metallica and Eminem to Barney the Dinosaur was used as part of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques put in place by the US, and that really stuck with people.
Perhaps because of how strangely relatable it was. Take it from someone who tended bar the summer Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ dropped, we all know how it feels to have our senses assaulted by a song we really, really don’t want to hear. To be utterly unable to do anything about this noise blasting in our ears. Simultaneously, something we should be able to ignore and get on with our day, yet is able to completely kneecap our ability to get anything done. A 120 decibel version of your little brother doing the “I’m not touching you!” routine.
Thus, we could all imagine having ‘Born In The USA’ blasted at us at an unbearable volume in a way we couldn’t really imagine being, like, waterboarded. The vast majority of acts who’d had their music used this way were furious. Which makes sense, there’s an unbearable irony to ‘Killing in the Name’ by Rage Against The Machine being used in a literal war crime. However, not everyone had a problem with it. In fact, Drowning Pool saw it as an honour, despite the very same song being banned from the airways at the same time.
How did a Drowning Pool song get used at Guantanamo Bay?
Despite the fact that their Nu-Metal hit ‘Bodies’ had been banned from post-9/11 radio play due to some unfortunate parallels in the lyrics, the song became a popular choice in Guantanamo Bay as part of their interrogation tactics. According to several sources, Mohamedou Ould Slahi was repeatedly played the song at high volume over a ten-day period while the lights of his cell would flash on and off as a way of getting him to falsely confess to recruiting for Al-Qaeda.
Now, the vast majority of artists spoke out against their music being used in such a way, but not Drowning Pool. Their bassist, Stevie Benton, said to Spin, “People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that, played over and over, it can psychologically break someone down. I take it as an honour to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”
Time did not make the band’s views any more mature, as on July 4th, 2017, the band were invited to play at a July 4th celebration for the troops stationed at Guantanamo Bay. The band accepted, and over a decade and a half after that song was used to commit a war crime, it once more rang out over that fateful slice of the Cuban coast. Should have spent the next ten days playing it over and over again if those jarheads liked it so much.