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Former KISS lead guitarist Ace Frehley is drawing criticism after making a bizarre claim in reference to last weekend's tragic Astroworld music festival in Houston, Texas.
Nine-year-old Ezra Blount was pronounced dead on Sunday, making him the tenth death connected to terrifying crowd surges at the Travis Scott-hosted event. More than 300 more people were injured at the festival.
While Scott has come under fire for a lack of appropriate security or medical personnel on site, crowd surges are far from unique to Astroworld and have been blamed for hundreds of deaths over the years.
Nevertheless, Frehley took to Facebook over the weekend to make a statement about the tragedy along with a photo of a bright red sock with 'Not Today Satan' emblazoned on it.
"In regard to what happened in Houston TX…Our prayers go out to all the families who lost loved ones at the concert!…Seems like it was a 'Satanic Ritual' gone very wrong! They’ll Be Hell To Pay!!! For everyone who let those kids die! …All people of every faith & religion should band together to stop this from ever happening again in America …God Bless!!!"
Frehley's post caused immediate outrage, with many commenters writing that conspiracy theories of this sort are akin to the Satanic Panic of the '80s or a pervasive '70s-era rumor about Kiss — that the band's name was an acronym for 'Knights In Satan's Service.'
In reply to some fans, Frehley (though he was apparently using his girlfriend's Facebook account) repeated the claim that Astroworld "was a satanic event." He urged followers to "Do your homework on Travis!"
According to The Guardian, there were 44 crowd-related disasters that killed at least 10 people between 1999 and 2015.
Prior to '99, one of the most famous crowd surge disasters in the U.S. occurred at a Who concert in 1979 at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum when 11 people were trampled to death as a crowd rushed towards the stage.