The Null Device

Iraqi death metal

A look at the Iraqi death-metal scene, or in particular, the Iraqi death-metal band; a group of five young men who sing in fluent American (learned from TV shows) and have ambitions of moving overseas: (via NWD)
"Iraq, man, there's nothing here," Moudhafar says. "The scene is in other places. Life is in other places."
All their songs are in English. Heavy metal should be either in English or German, says rhythm guitarist Faisal Talal. "Arabic doesn't fit." Moudhafar interjects with sudden hauteur, "We don't want just anybody to listen to our music. It should be, like, an educated person."

(I'm not so sure about the you-can't-rock-in-Arabic thing; I've seen it done. And if they're not at least using Middle-Eastern scales in their music, they're missing out.)

There are 3 comments on "Iraqi death metal":

Posted by: Esraa Fri Mar 19 07:32:19 2004

It's really great having Metal in Iraq, I'm from Kuwait, I got 2 bands and I was gonna say that you can't get the language in the music that would be too wierd but what I do in my bands is get Arabic Percussion and you can get the oud in too, it's really cool doing that

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Fri Mar 19 11:06:17 2004

Please post some MP3s somewhere. I'd like to hear what heavy metal with Arabic percussion sounds like.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Fri Mar 19 13:44:24 2004

Btw, for all those who say you can't rock in Arabic, I say:

http://uar.com.au/99/_music/_mp3/cois_il_hamdu_lilah.mp3