Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au) has issued the following report from Owen Thomson:

Death-metal gods DEICIDE have been praising a certain pitchfork-wielding entity since 1987, so you might expect them to be involved in the odd black mass or virginal sacrifice. Frontman Glen Benton even has an inverted crucifix burned into his forehead, but drummer Steve Asheim isn't even sure the Dark One exists.

"The whole point of satanic music is to blaspheme against the church," Asheim says. "I don't believe in or worship a devil. Life is short enough without having to waste it doing this whole organised praying, hoping, wishing-type thing on some superior being."

Deicide are the yin to Barry Manilow's yang. The ageing crooner writes the songs that make the whole world sing, but the enraged Florida quartet pen the tunes that make it want to inflict serious self-harm. Catchy lyrical pearls such as "trample on the lambs of God, bow before thy lord Satan" may render a listener less tolerant the next time someone cuts them off in traffic.

"Glen is the lyric guy, and he's just filled with disgust for Christian hypocrisy and things of that nature," Asheim says. "He draws from personal experience, anger and resentment for his lyrical subject matter."

As you'd expect from a hardcore band who pen songs such as 'Death To Jesus' and 'Homage To Satan', they have effortlessly managed to outrage moralists and religious groups the world over, possibly causing more widespread distress than an episode of Bert Newton's Family Feud. Deicide, whose name translates as killing of a god, are touring in support of their 12th album, The Stench Of Redemption.

In February, they were forced to cancel a show in Valparaiso, Chile, amid controversy stemming from promotional posters featuring an image of Christ with a bullet hole in his forehead. More recently, their video for Homage to Satan, which features blood-spattered zombies on a rampage to capture a priest, was banned from British music TV channel Scuzz TV.

But the 36-year-old Asheim says it was more than just hatred for all things religious that made the band cranky in the early days. There was also the matter of lame '80s metal.

"The metal comes just from a resentment of crap being called metal," he says. "That's what drove the metal to be as heavy as it was and the lyrical content just had to step up to the music. It had to fit that angry disposition. There's no shortage of things to be pissed at in the world and people can pick their poison."

Asheim is dubious when it comes to the whole devil thing, but he's not much clearer on the subject of God.

"Stuff [in the world] is just amazing," he says. "Whether somebody created it, I just don't know, maybe somebody did. Maybe it just worked out that way."

Even if God exists, Asheim isn't worried about being hit by a bolt of lightning or being turned into a chicken.

"Even if there is a God he don't give a shit," says Asheim, who attended a Lutheran church as a kid. "People think he's keeping track of everyone's individual lives but that's ridiculous."

If there is a hell, Deicide are destined to become its permanent house band in a move not dissimilar to Celine Dion's long-standing gig at Caesar's Palace. Asheim doesn't believe in hell, either.

"People have ideas implanted into their f---ing brains so early that, of course, they say, 'Oh, it's a lake of fire, it's eternal pain, it's being up to your neck in piss.' I personally think that when you're dead you're just moss in the ground. It's a sad reality but you're just a corpse and you're going to turn to dust."