Marilyn Manson once said, “I view my job as being someone who is supposed to piss people off. I don’t want to be just a smiling face you see on television presenting some vapid kind of easily digestible garbage.” Alabama’s Satan’s Youth Ministers not only agree, but they live and perform by this philosophy.

With a name that would startle any practicing Christian and a MySpace page decorated with an erect phallus surrounded by two symmetrical nuclear explosions and a robot-like contraption overlooking it all, Satan’s Youth Ministers may catch listeners off-guard.

“If you are talking about weirding people out, not just here in the Bible Belt, but all over the place, we’re pretty effective,” vocalist Grand Magus Malister Sally, known during waking hours as Curt Conner, said.

It’s easy to misinterpret the band’s message, which is not to advocate Satanism. “[We're] worrying people’s mothers that their children are getting involved with a Satanic cult, but in reality we’re just about [having] a good time because life is short,” Conner said. “To say that our music is Satanic would be a complete and utter stretch.”

Satan’s Youth Ministers advocates the pursuit of pleasure. Because many associate indulgence with the Devil, the band uses that correlation to further their philosophy. “Our Satan won’t give you his last cigarette, but he’ll share it with you,” Conner said. “Our theme is a message [of] spreading a good time and a wild spectacle.”

With the provocative motto “Hail Satan!” Satan’s Youth Ministers use Lucifer as a metaphor for self-gratification.Though they have changed their lineup several times since their 2004 conception, they have kept their unique censure towards traditional values.

“Our themes go from stories of chemical slavery that people put themselves into [to] wild visions into the future and twisted parables of the past,” Conner said. “Church of Christ repression has pushed us farther and farther into the arms of the Devil.”

Satan’s Youth Ministers performs keeping spectacle in mind, and its show transcends the realm of music. “If there is any similarity between us and Kiss, it’s in the most low tech kind of way,” Conner said of their stage tricks and costumes.