I’m a rather stubborn minded individual, however if you give me the right song my will becomes more malleable than yellow PlayDough (the weakest of all PlayDoughs). So, if one were to ever need me – an able bodied individual with a long list of accomplishments, skills and abilities – to fight a war, then all you need is to play one of these songs during your recruitment commercial. It's a pretty simple tactic. I’m even giving you the list!

And in all honesty, this list could have reached into the hundreds but I've done the gentlemanly thing and limited myself to only one metal song for this. Why? Because then it'd be too easy.

First off, as stated by WordArc celeb Claudia Pedrero on the topic of War songs, "the deliberate clashing…deliberate violence, in what you're hearing, it's suppose to imitate what war is," and there is no place within the musical world that has more deliberate violence than metal. You've seen the news headlines (Teen Told To Kill by Insert Popular Metal Group), so I don't need to explain how I come close to shattering a rib every time I have to force myself not to kill something while listening to Slayer. So metal gets one shot only (and it's a headshot at that).

So, in no particular order, I give you the 7 songs that could easily influence me to kill another human on a blood soaked battle field of war...

"Eye of the Tiger" By Survivor

I know this is an easy one but this song is deadly. This song stands as the greatest thing to ever come out of the 80s (history's greatest decade) and there is no person that can deny the urge to start something epic while listening to this.



"Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen

If it's good enough for Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign then it's good enough to fight a battle in the name of one's country for. Screw it, doesn't even have to be for my country, could be anything.



Like any good listener, I take Bruce Springsteen's words at face value and so the story goes that a man goes to a town and is given a rifle and goes off to a foreign land to go and kill a yellow man. Heavy. The rest isn't really important aside from the ending where apparently he becomes a cool rocking Daddy in the USA: I'd be down for that.

Really what this song lacks in relatability (I wasn't born in the USA) it makes up for in a well rounded future based on the promise that if I kill foreigners I'll become a cool rocking Daddy in the USA. I can do that.



"Thunderstruck" by AC/DC

Taking a step outside of the 80s for a moment (but only a moment), AC/DC's Thunderstruck (made in the fucking 90s) showcases one of the main tactics necessary to get any gentle and well-reasoned soul to commit themselves to a war against other gentle and well-reasoned individuals: brain washing. This song will make you do anything as long as it's used in the proper context.

Example, in 2004, the Canadian Leader of the Opposition, one Stephen Harper, named "Thunderstruck" as his favorite song. Now I'm ending all my bed-side prayers with a nod to mister Harper.



But what really makes this song good for a war is that everyone knows this song. You don't even need to know the lyrics as half of it is just grunting to a generic rhythm (the most powerful of rhythms). This is the kind of song that you'd find in the wet dream of any modern Music Producer: it's catchier than the human papillomavirus and has more staying power than most songs written within the last five years. It's the perfect reason to kill.



"Mea Culpa" by the mutual masturbation of Brian Eno and David Bryne

I'm pretty sure this song is telling me to kill something. I'm not sure what, or when, but I feel that I have to attack something at some point. That, and every time I listen to it and close my eyes I see an image of limbless rabbits crying out in a world void of any happiness are the only reasons why this song makes the list.





"Holding Out For A Hero" by Bonnie Tyler

I dare you, dare you to listen to this song then go out outside and not kill a man in cold blood. Other than being freakishly catchy this song describes me down to the most specific of details: I'm strong, I'm fast, I'm sure and I'm pretty confident that I can be soon (whatever that means). What else qualifies a hero? Right, I need to be fresh from the fight. Well see that's the problem that only a well funded war can answer. Even a drunken fist-fight will do, but the problem there is that the latter scenario has me ending up jail if I unload an AK47 on the my opponent. A war will satisfy my urge for a fight (instilled in me by this very song) and will allow me to use automatic weaponry without a fuss.

Where have all the good men gone, Bonnie? It's not their fault. It’'s just that we live in a world that doesn't believe that war is the answer. Wait, let me rephrase that: we live in as a small portion of the world that says war is not the answer. I can be your street-wise Hercules, Bonnie. All you have to do is ask.



"War Metal Battle Master" by Lair of the Minotaur

Holy shit. Holy. Fucking. Shit. I just crapped my pants from how amazing this is.



This is metal – in fact, it's too metal for a proper song title. Fuck syntax, when has a war ever been won on the tactics of "proper grammar"? All Lair of the Minotaur needs are the facts: War, Metal, Battle and Master. Moreover, the video itself is the most metal thing in existence. Seriously. It starts off with a quote from a Hesiod war poem and then lays siege to the senses with images of decapitations, men in armor, disemboweled corpses, blood soaked axes and blood soaked naked women eating the disemboweled corpses of the decapitated armored men.



"Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani

It's the drums...