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Thursday, October 7, 2010

A little research on African metal scene... and some blog news!

What's new with my blog? First of all, I re-uploaded Katyusha's demo tracks in better quality. Second, thanks to 7inchcrust for uploading two first releases by Black Kronstadt in good quality and with all cover scans. I haven't yet contacted Media Tree Recs. for Aesahaettr demo, but I'll do it in the near future.

Now I have plans to work on a Russian-language blog for Red & Anarchist Metalheads. This idea is inspired by simular blogs from Colombia and Ecuador, and I already found some people who are willing to be the co-authors of the blog. So I probably would be much less active here... because it's time to build regional movements! As for this blog, maybe I'll write more posts about political and social issues, because my recent posts about politics gathered considerable attention. If all goes well, there's going to be an article about the current situation in Hungary (and maybe Poland). The recent events in Equador are of interest too, but you'd have to wait until I finally respond to all of my mail... answering such an amount of correspondence in English takes so much time :(

And finally: after my posts about oriental and caribbean metal I started wondering if there's any metal in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding the South African Republic. Yes, I already wrote about Ngos'a Bedimo from Cameroon, and there's a relatively well-known death metal band from Botswana called Crackdust (if not to take in account another death metal band - Infertile Surrogacy - who are said to be from Congo, but it's almost certainly a hoax)... but overall it seemed to be like the metal or punk scene is completely absent in Africa. It's disappointing but unsurprising, taking in account the extreme poverty and bad political condition in that region. Most of people there probably just don't have an opportunity to play any rock music, and these kinds of music are most likely out of the media there... you know what I mean.

So it was a big surprise for me to find a significant hard rock scene in Madagascar! Unfortunately their site has a lot of bugs, and it's all in French, but it was a very interesting find anyway. Yes, I know Madagascar has not many cultural relations to the mainland Africa - the Malagasy people are basically Indonesians who arrived there about 1500 years ago and later mixed with Bantu people. But anyway it's in the South African region.

The most well-known metal band in Madagascar is probably Sasamaso, a female-fronted thrash metal band formed in Antananarivo 8 years ago. They even have made one music video, which I can't embed here UPD: I've re-uploaded it to Youtube (but the quality is far from high, unfortunately):


For me their music is good, but I don't like the crosses they're wearing... it'd better be inverted ;)

There are also a couple of black metal acts in southern Africa - namely Rhanawa, a blackened thrash metal project from Malawi, and Darkest Place, a 7-piece(!) gothic/black metal band from Mozambique. I'm not sure if Rhanawa isn't a joke project, because the only image of him was actually stolen from Orisha Shakpana's myspace, and Malawi is a very unlikely place to find any metal fans there... but damn, the music is good! You can get Rhanawa's album "Heart of Mkango" here, for example.

As for Darkest Place, they're playing blackened gothic metal with male and female vocals. Looks like they have no proper releases, only some demo tracks. You can search on youtube for their stuff, if you wish.

P.S. A question to my Brazilian and Portuguese readers - can you tell me, what is this song about? It was recorded by a band named Neblina from Angola, the lyrics are in Portuguese and probably have some political references. But I'm not sure of what kind they are...

6 comments :

  1. I think these are the lyrics:

    Faces and names a time already gone,
    Bring back a month suffered
    Freedom was a dream of a united people
    of an entire country lost nearly
    one voice, one people; uima victory for a nation.
    Our hero runs for us,
    will be forever in our hearts
    These are, to always be:
    "The sons of the fatherland
    These are, to always be:
    "The sons of the fatherland

    A people is the voice of the nation, we honor the homeland
    fighting for peace and freedom
    diguemos not hunger, oppression and poverty
    we are Angola, and only united we stand
    dear comrades, let us join hands, keeping their head high because Angola is ours.

    Voices and a sentence of time already gone
    bring back a forgotten past
    expression is the will of a people united
    The nation is a country always dear
    one voice, one people, a victory for a nation.
    Our hero runs for us,
    will be forever in our hearts

    These are, to always be:
    "The sons of the fatherland
    These are, to always be:
    "The sons of the fatherland

    The original lyrics:

    http://www.lyricstime.com/neblina-filhos-da-p-tria-lyrics.html

    S, Crucified Bastard

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  2. If this was written by an Angolan ... It is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard
    Se isso foi escrito por um Angolano ... Isso é uma das coisas mais bonitas que eu já ouvi
    From Brasil / Do Brasil

    The Master of graves , the digger of souls
    Ghoul

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  3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNV6yUhV7uc
    Hey , this band is from Botswana

    Ghoul eat flesh from racists ! Ghoul agains fascism !

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  4. I am so loving this blog

    Emdeka - Conrad

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  5. Just been shown a link to this blog, great stuff here dude. I'd be interested to see your articles on Hungary and especially Poland. I have just moved to Poland from the UK. Your posts on the Polish bands are fantastic!

    My travel blog about my time in Poland can be fouund here, http://www.venturesinpolska.blogspot.com there are some Polish punk/crust videos on there too.

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  6. The first picture of the Girl is hot !

    ReplyDelete