666 Eve in LA: 20 Years Later

Outside, the daylight faded, bleeding into the night upon the city of Los Angeles as the sun set on June 5, 2006. This was the eve of the calendar’s most anticipated numerical anomaly: 6/6/06, and the sixth birthday of Radio Free Satan, one of the first podcast streaming services on the world wide web.

The two-story West Hollywood Zen Sushi Garden restaurant was the chosen venue for a carnal commemoration put on by Shane Bugbee, mastermind of Michael Hunt Publishing and last of Anton LaVey’s old guard. Bugbee was the propeller of this event and a series of historical precursors that laid the structural groundwork for modern alternative culture. His lineage traced directly from the ultimate mixtape of the Milwaukee Metal Fest down to both Chicago Expos of the Extreme held at the Congress Theater. Those early expos served as the direct model for Riot Fest today with their (at the time) radical fusion of punk, metal, and hip-hop. These instances and the post-Columbine Angry White Male and True Crime Warped Minds tours acted as the blueprint for the Witches Sabbath: Walpurgisnacht vaudeville twenty years later. This specific Los Angeles manifestation was called Satan’s Rockin’ 666 Eve, later preserved on physical media as a DVD movie titled 666 Eve.

Conspiring with Bugbee and Radio Free Satan in this event, and planting seeds for what would come to be the first satanic porno ever made were Lizzy Borden, Rob Black, and the industrial pornographer Matt Zane of Extreme Associates. At the time, Black was in the midst of intense federal litigation on obscenity charges brought by the government, showing a total disregard for his mounting legal trouble. In a bizarre twist of corporate opportunism, the remakers of The Omen from 20th Century Fox showed up to the 666 eve event as official sponsors. This created an odd, striking cognitive dissonance: a major Hollywood studio was funding a promotional campaign alongside an independent company being actively sued by the federal government over obscenity on the exact level of the event at hand.

As the numerical alignment of 6/6/06 set the aesthetic tone, the cabal infiltrated the restaurant, arousing attendees into a frenzy of carnal ecstasy. A grotesque gaggle had gathered for the celebration. Among the crowd, former Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5 rubbed shoulders (and other bodily areas) with adult film stars Gia Paloma and Paris Gables. The gathered murder steamrolled through the dusk and ignored the coming dawn as the organised anarchy went on, obliterating any societal restrictions.

The erogenous air thickened and turned electric during the performance art. A local S&M group took to exercising a rite of public humiliation with scantily clad women who held nails down on a 12-inch, upside-down wooden cross for a man to hammer directly into his own dick. The energy continued to coagulate as Zane’s band, Society 1, took one of the stages to stir the cauldron.

Igniting the electricity, an act fronted by another individual ordained by Anton LaVey personally took the stage to deliver a blistering diatribe against the centralized institution of the Church of Satan, who were hosting their own private, elite black collar affair the next day in LA as well as a blowout wedding put on by Stanton LaVey; the occasion exposed a unique ideological split amongst the devilishly inclined. The moment was simultaneously a drunken rant and a profound philosophical turning point, capturing the literal reality of a growing philosophical divide.

The performances dissolved into pure, visceral vaudeville. Flesh-hooks pierced the skin in people’s backs, connecting tethers to them as a band tore through Black Flag’s anthem "Rise Above." Paris Gables licked toilet bowls (a physical preview of the satanic adult film yet to come for revenge called Club Satan: The Witches Sabbath) and received sexually ambiguous cunnilingus and kisses from a pudgy brunette who collected pictures of male genitalia. All the while, cheeks were pierced and the party raged on, finally culminating in a carnal coronation of chocolate cake mashed in with blood and tits.

It was a party of vital carnality: vaudeville via cake, "Blitzkrieg Bop" covers, and a guy nailing his lower male ligature to an upside-down cross. This revelry feuled intense post-party rivalries by the end of the night and day of festivities in the city.

Now, twenty years after the fact, different practitioners have come to their own unique conclusions, driven by the inherently anarchistic and eroding nature of the concept. They continue to create their own total environments, rigorously applying these philosophies as the modern world shifts dramatically into new, digital directions.