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Sunday, July 20, 2014

African / Polynesian metal & whatever-"core" (pt. IV)

This is the next post in my series about African metal, and now I'll try to give more coverage to the "-core" aspect of this scene. Let's start with Katingation, an obscure death metal/grindcore/crust trio from somewhere in the far south-east of Angola:


It's the first African band I know to incorporate the elements of crust into their music. Angola also has Before Crush from Benguela, who play a kind of melodic metalcore - but honestly it's nothing special. What's more insteresting is a phenomenon of "Kenyacore" mentioned in this interview of Last Year's Tragedy. According to it, there's a small but thriving scene of "-core" bands in Kenya. Of all the bands mentioned there, I liked Mortal Soul the most:


And do you remember me saying that Polynesian/Pacific Islander metal is one of the very few things that's even more hard to find than African metal? (apart from the obvious metal scenes of Australia and NZ, of course) Turned out there was a thriving metal scene in Tahiti (French Polynesia) during the 90's, but the only release I could find is "Scum" by Varua Ino (1997). The band name means "evil spirit" or "devil", and they were playing heavy/thrash metal with political lyrics both in English and in their native language:


3 comments :

  1. the Katingation EP seems to be available for free download on bandcamp:

    http://katingation.bandcamp.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Hymn_for_the_Tortured/85421. Hymn for the Tortured were from Guam. check out Minatatnga, they broke up but might start doing stuff again... they have former members of Hymn for the Tortured and play hardcore focusing on Chamoru identity and decolonization.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm suspicious about Katingation are from Angola, all stories around sound like fakes and there is no metal scene known in this region of Angola...
    Well, i like your blog

    ReplyDelete