Metal Jew

Photo story on Botswanan metal scene

I wrote the words for this photo story on the Botswana metal scene in Vice online. It features fantastic pictures by Frank Marshall such as this one:

 

Miscellaneous stuff

There's a somewhat sarcastic post on Jamaican black metal here

A South African photographer called Frank Marshall has produced some very cool photos of the Botswanan metal scene. Visit his website here.

The latest issue of Terrorizer magazine has an intriguing interview with the delightfully bonkers Meads of Asphodel (not online unfortunately) which explains, pretty convincingly why their latest CD 'The Murder of Jesus the Jew' is not antisemitic.There's also an incredibly lengthy explanation of the song 'Jew Killer' by the Meads' Metatron here.

Metal in Barbados and Jamaica

I just got the following comment on one of my old posts:

Hi. My name is Kadeem Ward. I'm the only member of Barbados' only Metal band, Its called Conrad. The project is based on Dark Barbadian Folklore as well as Afro-Religions & Caribbean Ancestry. Check out my band page - www.myspace.com/conradbb Also check out Orisha Shakpana - www.myspace.com/orishaoftheearth Its a Jamaican Black Metal band led by my friend and session vocalist Lord Ifrit. Similar themes, his being a bit darker. Thanks in advance!

Check out the two myspace pages: there's a lot to love here. I love that these bands exist at all. I love the irony that Burzum-style, one man band black metal - so apparently context specific - manages to be an effective vehicule for explorations of Carribean identity. I love it when lone individuals do something totally at odds with their environment.

 

Metal rules the globe

I'm really pleased to see that the website for the forthcoming book 'Metal Rules The Globe' is now live. I have an article in the collection on Israeli metal and there's interesting looking chapters on Malta, SE Asia, China and other scenes.

Metal bands tour China

Historically, two of the main regions where metal has been most absent are Africa and China. I've tried to collect information on African metal on this blog. China though has always been a bit of a mystery to me. But I just came across (hat tip to Invisible Oranges) a fascinating post about western metal bands touring in China which features an interview with a band called Corrupt Absolute who have pioneered tours in provincial China (apparently some major metal bands have already played in Beijing and  Shanghai). There's something that really excites me about this: it's like the birth of the underground in the 80s, when playing extreme metal was new and kind of heroic.

New article on metal in Africa

I had a short piece published on metal in Africa for a new UK free music magazine called Juke

The article can't be read online and I'm not sure where you can get the magazine, but you can  download a pdf of it here.

Zambian metal

Bob Macklin posted a comment on my post on metal in Africa alerting me to a Zambian group called Ngozi Familyled by Paul Ngozi and this track. The track appears to be a kind of syncretic and upbeat mix of southern African music and 70s hard rock/metal. One of Ngozi Family's albums was apparently called 'Heavy Metal'. Bob didn't give much further info but some googling revealed that Ngozi Family were (are?) part of something called the Zambian 'Zamrock' scene. I couldn't find much info as to whether it is current or a historical phenomenon. Still, it's fascinating to find an African form of rock. Does anyone know if there are other sub-Saharan black African rock scenes.

More 'black' black metal

Further to my posts on metal in Africa here and here, Justin Davisson alerted me to the forthcoming release schedule of Legion of Death Records, which includes stuff from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and most intriguingly, Sasamo from Madagascar and Orisa Shakpana from Jamaica. Both of the latter appear to be 'black' (although I loath such crude terms). Check out their listings at Metal Archives. The Jamaican act - a one man black metal outfit - seems particularly intriguing, here's what Legion of Death say about them:

ORISHA SHAKPANA is Jamaica’s premier Black Metal band, which has been compared to bands like ORDER FROM CHAOS, BLASPHEMY, SARCOFAGO, VON and Norse Black Metal. Lyrically, it is about the dark history that Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean has and shares. It is also about Jamaican superstitions of the night and mythology that has traces back to Pre-Columbian Jamaica. The Orisha are types of gods, and Shakpana is the god of diseases and insanity. Olokun is the elder god of the Orisha, lord of the ocean and earth’s depths. Also there is the tradition of misanthropic lyrics as the only warrior behind ORISHA SHAKPANA, Lord Ifrit, is a misanthropist. The themes also deal with Jamaica’s geographic nature.

As far as I can remember, this is the first time I have heard of a band drawing of black African-originated mythologies (although Sepultura did use Afro-Barzilian themes). It's certainly the first I've heard of that draws on Carribean mythology.

What it proves of course is that practically any region has a 'dark side', an occult mythology that can be used to create syncretic black metal.

A Metal Experiment in Cameroon

A Dutch artist called Steve Jouwersma contacted me regarding metal in Africa (something I've blogged about here):

I just came back from Cameroon where I did an art residency. When I was there I came up with the idea of organizing a metal concert to see the response of the audience unknown to metal. I found that almost nobody knew much about metal music, even the term METAL had to be put as "metal rock" to understand what i was pointing at.
Talking with musicians I discovered metal never happened in Cameroon at all. In the 60's there was rock and roll but due economic decline and maybe other reasons it never evolved in heavier guitar styles.

I made posters for a metal concert and invented with some local people a band name (Ngos'a Bedimo) wich means "ghosts music"" and put this on 50 black tshirts:

I found musicians willing to try and play it, and I had some distortion pedals with me to use. At the end what is typical for Africa the musicians came way too late for rehearsal or didn't show up at all. In a moment of improvisation I played metal on a right hand guitar ( i'm left handed) with a "makkosa" drummer on Saturday night in a club in Douala. It was fun but not completely what I wanted to do (i wanted an all black, all cameroonian black man metal band)

I saw your essay presentaiton online "Beneath the Remains" where you talk about the underground experience. This is what i was looking for maybe, a fresh audience , strong link to occult, ancestors and witchcraft confronted with metal. "Underground music scene" besides the hiphop cd-r from young kids was very hard to find, "traditional" was easier.

So well a nice experiment for the 3 weeks stay there, I left some cd's and a guitar book how to play metal.

The idea of creating a previously non-existent 'local' popular music genre in this way is an intriguing one. Music scenes tend to emerge either 'organically' through the efforts of people on the ground, or through the efforts of music corporations - this experiment followed neither model. In fact you could argue that this was a kind of 'missionary' attempt to create African metal. The imperialist connotations of this are of course problematic. Nevertheless, as an experiment to think what black African metal might look like is fascinating.

Flowers in the Desert

Mark Levine's Heavy Metal Islam book got mixed reviews in the metal community - many people acciused him of only having a superficial understanding of metal. My feeling was that, while the title of the book pomised something it didn't really deliver, the book did provide an interesting insight into youth culture in the Islamic world and the possibilities that rock, metal and other music hold for creating a culture that resists both Islamic fundamentalism and western hegemony.

Levine has put together a compilation album of Middle Eastern rock, metal and hip hop called  'Flowers in the Desert' . It should be out pretty soon. He's also making a documentary based on the book that will doubtless provide an interested contrast to the Heavy Metal in Bagdhad and Global Metal films.

In the meantime, here's a trailer for Flowers in the Desert: