KISS founding member Ace Frehley is promoting a conspiracy theory that asserts the crowd surge that killed nine people at Travis Scott's Astroworld festival was actually a "satanic ritual".
In a Facebook post with a photo of a sock embroidered with the words 'Not today Satan', the guitarist wrote: "In regard to what happened in Houston... 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! [sic] For everyone who let those kids die!
"All people of every faith and religion should band together to stop this from ever happening again in America. God Bless!"
Frehley joins a chorus of evangelical Christians, TikTok users and QAnon supporters who have peddled the idea that the tragic events at Astroworld were engineered as a "demonic" human sacrifice to Satan.
One video of a Pennsylvania pastor preaching to his congregation about the theory has racked up hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok.
"If you think that was an accident, you are not paying attention. If you look at the stage setup, if you listen to the lyrics, this was not a mishap in a field in Houston. This was a satanic ritual, 100 percent," Greg Locke can be heard saying in the clip.
Ironically, KISS has long been plagued with accusations of being devil worshippers, prompting frontman Gene Simmons to dispel rumours that the band's name was an acronym for Knights in Satan's Service in his autobiography.
Simmons called the claims "misinformation" and said he and the band were frequently "accosted by religious fanatics, especially in the southern states" of America.
