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:

African metal bands: several new discoveries

Since my blog appears to be one of the very few places providing information about very obscure scenes, such as African, I'll continue researching and writing about such scenes. African metal (and other sorts of extreme music) is probably one of the rarest things in existence. Of course I'm talking about sub-Saharan Africa (minus SAR), not Maghreb (if you want North African metal and punk, check out this blog).

Outside of Botswana and Madagascar, which have rock/metal scenes of more or less considerable size, all such bands can be counted by hands, and some of them obviously are fake: Infertile Surrogacy are most likely from the Basque Country, not Congo, no matter what they wrote in their profile; Rhawana from Malawi is likely to be fake to, as his photos are stolen from Lord Ifrit of Orisha Shakpana; Tanzania-based Giza Uchawi's "Kizuu" demo may be not a fake (see the cover scan above), but his music is nowhere to be found... Additionally, it's somewhat ironic that there's no black metal in the Black Continent, if Darkest Place (pic related) doesn't count. According to my only regular reader from Nigeria, it isn't even because of poverty and lack of access to music/instruments, but mostly because the people there are very, very superstitious. It seems to be quite true: at least the members of In Oath, the only known metalcore band in Kenya, appear to be very religious. And the other Kenyan metal band, Absence of Light, is in fact comprised of Indian immigrants, not the native Kenyans. However, there's still some interesting stuff of African origin which I haven't mentioned here before.

Let's start with D-Fe, a tribal hardcore/deathgrind/whatever else band who claim to have invented their on style called "zwinx" (or "zwenks"). Yes, I know they're from France, but they still have African immigrants in their lineup, and their music is indeed unique. Their album "Rwanda", released in 2008, is probably the only concept album dedicated to the story of genocide in Rwanda, "an atrocity perpetrated by small men (and the petty local clergy of the Catholic Church), and a sacrifice made by the great ones" (c):

I also managed to find a handful of classic rock / hard'n'heavy African bands from the 70's, such as Ngozi Family (Zambia) and Nosey Road (Botswana), but the majority of them don't exist anymore. However, here's a traditional heavy metal band from Uganda, formed circa 2010, but sounding like it's from the late 70's / early 80s:

There's also a very strange band from Uganda called Vale of Amonition, which is playing some kind of freestyle doom/stoner rock. There are two of their songs posted on youtube, if you're interested. However, be prepared for the very lo-fi and experimental kind of sound (but that what you probably have in mind when searching for "African metal", right?..)

And finally, some more old school stuff, this time from Madagascar - Pharaons, a thrash metal band formed in 1989. All the lyrics on their only release "The Evil World" were strictly WWII-themed, but didn't condone the war in any way; however, they did use some Nazi imagery purely for shock value, akin to several Japanese speed/thrash metal bands of the same period (Rommel, Mein Kampf, Rosenfeld, Harkenkreuz, etc.):

African metal scene: Kenya & Botswana

Finally, this weekend I had some time to check the music recommended to me by my readers, and let me start from reviewing some African metal.

As I have already said, metal or even rock music is almost non-existent in Africa, if not to count South African republic, Madagascar, and the countries near Mediterranian sea. Countries having at least one more or less known rock/metal band could be counted by one hand: Angola (Neblina), Cameroon (Ngos'a Bedimo, never released anything), Mozambique (Darkest Place, again no physical releases), Malawi (Rhanawa, most likely a hoax)... if not two important exceptions.

First of all, looks like Kenya has at least two metal bands, and they're actually not bad. Initially I had quite low expectations on the band Last Year's Tragedy from Nairobi (especially when I saw tags like "emo" on their last.fm page), but their single "A Tribute To Anarchy" turned out to be much better than I expected. LYT's music can be loosely described as post-hardcore/metal with lots of keyboards. Of course the quality of production isn't perfect... but come on, it's the first African (non-SAR) hardcore band I've ever heard of!

There's at least one more Kenyan metal band, called Absense of Light. Almost nothing is known about them, but here's a preview of their album "Penumbra":

And of course, I have to mention the metal scene of Botswana, one of the most active in Africa. Botswana is a sparsely populated desert country, yet it's among the most urbanized and generally developed countries in sub-Saharan africa, and looks like it applies to the metal scene too. One of the best African metal bands, Crackdust, is from Botswana:

Don't like death metal? Well, there's some traditional heavy metal in the vein of early 80s NWOBHM scene (though in my opinion it isn't as impressive as Crackdust... and the vocalist's accent is quite strong even for me, not a native English speaker):

There are some rock/metal festivals in Gaborone, even though it don't looks like there are too many attendees:

The perfoming bands are: Stane, Amok, Wrust, Metal Orizon, Dust n' Fire. According to them, there are no serious political or religious obstacles for playing metal in Botswana, if not to mention some Muslim fanatics who are destroying the instruments which they believe to be designed for playing "satanic music" - but such cases are extremely rare. As we can see, there's already plenty of heavy metal and death metal bands, but no black metal at all. That's a pity, since not only the mythology, but also the history of Africa has a lot of material for black/pagan metal lyrics.

For just a single example, here's a story of Joshua Milton Blahyi, better known as General Butt Naked (no, it isn't a joke - when he was a warlord, he actually led his troops naked except for shoes and a gun, and he believed that his nakedness was a source of protection from bullets), once dubbed "the most evil man in the world". Joshua Blahyi was born in Liberia (yes, I know it's very far from both Kenya and Botswana, but it's still in Africa...), and at age 11 he was initiated as a tribal priest and participated in his first human sacrifice. During the course of the three day ritual that followed, Blahyi says that he had a vision in which he was told by the Devil that he would become a great warrior and that he should continue to practice human sacrifice and cannibalism to increase his power.

During the days of Liberian civil war, Blahyi claimed that he "met Satan regularly and talked to him", and took part in monthly human sacrifices. According to him, it "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces to eat". Blahyi also purported that when he was a warlord and Satanic priest, he had magical powers that made him invisible, and a "special power" to capture a town singlehandedly, then call in his troops afterwards to "clean up" (which meant slaughtering anyone they saw, chopping their heads off and using them as soccer balls). During the First Liberian Civil war he led a mercenary unit, many of whom were child soldiers, that was known as the Butt Naked Brigade - and they indeed entered every battle naked, hence the nickname.

When I read this article, I just couldn't help smiling at every occurence of the words "General Butt Naked", even though the article deals with very serious and gruesome subjects. As of today, former General Butt Naked claims he has found Jesus and seeks redemption for his crimes. Now he's an evangelical pastor, preaching peace and forgiveness - but I think it'd be better for him to form a black metal band instead :P At least he actually deserved the name of "the most evil man in the world", unlike some...

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...

Orisha Shakpana - demo (2006)

ORISHA SHAKPANA "demo"

Year: 2006
Genre: Raw Black/Pagan Metal
Country: Jamaica

Track List:

1. Satanic Powers in Jamaican Hills
2. The Offspring of Gashanami

DOWNLOAD

Orisha Shakpana isn't a RABM band, but it's a really unique project. It started in 2004 as a 3-piece band called "Dark Cirkus", but now Orisha Shakpana is an one-man project. Looks like there aren't any other metal bands in Jamaica at all, as well as an audience for such kind of music, and it may be the reason for Orisha Shakpana not recording anything new after 2007. However, during 2006-2007 two full-length demo albums were recorded, but they aren't available anywhere - with exception of these two tracks.


As of today, Orisha Shakpana is an only black metal project made by black people, with lyrics based on the Central African mythology (and I'm sure it's free from any kind of white, black, or whatever else racist propaganda). For example, the 2nd track on this demo is based on the legend of the African god of Vengance, Gashanami:

"I evoke the black bull
I evoke Gashanami
to continue his vengeance upon mankind

In the winter solstice
He haunts you
The black bull of Trelawny
His long black horns impale the human
The ghastly black bull
slayer of the Christans
Slayer of Myal, the white magick
Slayer of all good and pure
The bloodthirsty god of vengance wants your death
as he spreads across the island
behind his flaming eyes is death
He snorts nothing but smog and fire

Hail Gashanami - The impaler of Trelawny

The black bull was evoked
by the Obeah man
to send forth the legion of Darkness
To slaughter the Christians
Behold the demon bull rides out of the pits of Hell!!!!"

myspace


P.S. There's also a folk/black metal project in Cameroon called Ngos'a Bedimo, and they seem to be the only metal band in a whole Central Africa. Most of people there just aren't aware of existence of such music, but hopefully it will change. Here's their promo video: