Blackie Lawless says W.A.S.P. may play “Animal (F**k Like a Beast)” live again

W.A.S.P. helped start off 2022 on a good note when they announced their 40th anniversary tour for later this year. To make matters even more exciting, frontman Blackie Lawless teased that the band may play their hit “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)” live during the run.

Lawless confirmed in an interview in 2009 that he’d never perform “Animal” again because of his born-again Christianity.

I don’t want 13-year-olds going around singing that song. If that’s something they wanna do later in their life, that’s their business. But, like I said, it’s a question of faith and the religious conviction that I have.

Blackie Lawless

Because of its vulgar lyrics, “Animal” was dubbed one of the PMRC’s “Filthy 15” songs.

However, during a new interview on SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk,” [via Blabbermouth] the frontman explained that he’s on the fence about bringing the song back into the band’s setlist for the upcoming tour.

I don’t know. There’s a part of me that says it’s already out there. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Do I owe it to the fanbase to really make this a true retrospect of what we’ve done. If I had to give you an answer right now, I would say I’m leaning in the direction of doing it.

Blackie Lawless

Lawless added that not only did he not want to play “Animal” in recent years because of his faith, but because W.A.S.P. were creating “more serious material,” and he didn’t want to send mixed signals to their audience by playing a song with such a contrasting message.

We haven’t played that song in quite some time — it’s probably going on 15 years now. But however long it’s been, I think I made my point. So we’re in the process of… We’re discussing, let’s put it that way.

It’s not a progressive doctrine as some people believe, where a person needs to keep going back time after time to ask forgiveness for things they’ve done. The Bible says ‘Christ’s blood cleanses us once and for all.’ So that said, I no longer do songs like ‘Animal’ because scripture tells us to ‘Let no corrupt speech come from your mouth’ so that’s why I wouldn’t want to do those sort of songs, but it’s certainly not because of any attempted future atonement on my part. That gets done the moment you first come to true repentance.

Blackie Lawless, frontman of W.A.S.P

W.A.S.P.’s tour kicks off at the end of October, and will feature support from Armored Saint. Tickets go on sale today (Jan. 14) at 3PM, grab yours here.