Once again about oriental metal: Saudi Arabian metal ladies... and more!

After reading my posts about oriental metal, 7inchcrust pointed my attention to Deathless Anguish, a political death metal act from Saudi Arabia. While searching for their albums, I came across really surprising stuff:

Seriously, an all-girl black/death metal band from Saudi Arabia is one of the things I least expected. All-female metal bands are very rare even in the West... let alone islamic countries. Anyway, the band is called Chicks Behind Walls, they were formed late 2006 in Jeddah and presumedly are playing melodic death/black metal in the vein of In Flames and Arch Enemy. Now let the girls to tell their story by themselves (style and grammar kept intact):

"The Saudi Arabian girls Metal Band in Jeddah - Chicks Behind walls started at the end of 2006 . -Rana(the lead guitar) & Ghada (the rythem guitar) are playing guitars around 5 years ago & they are into heavy metal music , they was thinking to make something weird in saudi arabia like being in a metal band which they are (girls). so they started with the Idea of Chicks Behind Walls together. - they mixed up Melodic style with black metal, 4 month later Ghada met up with Dina ( the bass guitar ) at university, & she discovered that dina into black metal music & she is A bass guitar player so we talked about the Idea of CBW & she was agree & happy with that. - the lucky thing was Dina knows a girl from canada(farah) & she live in jeddah which she play Drums & she accepted to play as a drummer in CBW - she is not that much fan for metal music , but she loved it. - we knows that many people in Saudi Arabia will not agree with this & we will find many hard ways to get what we want , but we will fight for CBW, for metal, for life! - we'r Done from the 1st album Called : ((Fragile Silence)) but we'r waiting for these songs to be recording. so soon as possible we will upload it here in MySpace and we will show the world what A Girls from Saudi Arabia can do in the metal world!! cheers...m/"

Well, there was already at least one all-female rock band in SA, namely The Accolade... but they were playing just pop-rock, and CBW are playing metal. Sadly I can't say anything about their music, since it isn't available anywhere. But I have got a demo of an another all-female Arabic band called Scarlet Tear. They're a duo from Bahrain, and they're playing not black/death metal (unlike CBW), but more soft music in the vein of more popular female-fronted rock bands - like Evanescence or Within Temptation:

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I'm not sure if you'd like these tracks or not... but the very existence of female-fronted metal in the Middle East fascinates me. Keeping in mind that Saudi Arabian laws require women to cover in public, and don't allow them even to drive cars, one might guess that participating in a metal band takes a lot of courage for them. That's what is called a real rebellion!

And speaking of Deathless Anguish: after a search for their music I was unpleasantly surprised that all the links to their albums are dead due to copyright violation. However, there are a lot of videos of them and their side project Creative Waste (yes, that Arabian political grindcore act I was speaking about lately) on Youtube:

As it was said there on Youtube: "That, sir, is a win". They're just insane on their live shows, and their sound very much resemble classic political death/grind bands, such as Napalm Death and Terrorizer (I speak about Creative Waste, Deathless Anguish are more of classic death metal... and they're very good too!).

Overall there are about 50-60 rock bands in Saudi Arabia, and 10-15 of them play metal. Good luck to this scene!