Hysteria! Show Co-Creator Reveals KISS Disallowed Use Of “Beth”

Peacock’s new Satanic Panic series Hysteria! tells the story of a small town gripped by fears that Satanists are running amuck doing evil deeds all seemingly stemming from a few kids’ love of heavy metal music. Speaking at last weekend's 2024 New York Comic Con, the co-creator and executive producer of the show explained how important the soundtrack is and revealed the one song they couldn’t use, reports usanetwork.com.

Co-creator, showrunner, and executive producer Matthew Scott Kane revealed KISS disallowed the use of their iconic song “Beth” in a scene.

“You saw the scene earlier, Dylan and Judith are at their locker and they’re having a sweet exchange,” he told the crowd at NYCC after a screening of the pilot. “We thought it’d be great to play KISS’s ‘Beth’ over that scene, but apparently the Knights in Satan’s Service have a very strict policy about who they’re loaning their songs to and they found our Satanic comedy to be a little too immoral for their tastes.” 

He added: “So we do not have any KISS songs in this series, but we do have a couple of good KISS jokes in this series.”

Hysteria! synopsis: When a beloved varsity quarterback disappears during the “Satanic Panic” of the late 1980s, a struggling high school heavy metal band of outcasts realize they can capitalize on the town’s sudden interest in the occult by building a reputation as a Satanic metal band, until a bizarre series of murders, kidnappings, and reported “supernatural activity” triggers a leather-studded witch hunt that leads directly back to them.