When Black Metal's Anti-Religious Message Gets Turned on Islam

[Quidsane]

When Black Metal's Anti-Religious
Message Gets Turned on Islam

An underground scene of bands in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East
are finding new use for heavy music's blasphemous potential.


The logo for the Arabic Anti-Islamic League, the cover for Janaza's album Burning Quaran Ceremony, the logo for Seeds of Iblis.

"Burn the Quran! Burn the fucking Quran!" a woman screams hoarsely, over and over again. Tinny guitars course beneath her howls, sawing away at any semblance of melody. Sampled snippets of fundamentalist Islamic rhetoric filter through, and muffled voices exhort their unseen audience to praise Allah and to destroy the infidel.

To fans of heavy music, the hallmarks are immediately recognizable. This is raw, mid-tempo black metal, a lo-fi example of heavy metal's most evil subgenre. Black metal feeds upon hatred, nihilism, and anti-human behavior. Extremity is everything. It drinks the blood of Christ, turns upon its own, and takes almost carnal pleasure in the theory and imagery of war. The music from the early days of this scene conjured images of the ashes of burned churches and the dried blood of murder, and yet the genre, in its middle age, often doesn't shock the way it once did. The hellish noise of this particular song, though, does. There's something different about it. This is real.





The overall effect is chilling, which is, of course, exactly its creator's intent. She says her name is Anahita, the 28-years-old voice and vitriol behind Janaza, which is believed to be Iraq's very first female-fronted, black-metal band. Allow that notion—Iraq's very first female-fronted, black-metal band—to sink in for a moment. Her first recording, Burn the Pages of Quran, boasts five distorted, primitive tracks that altogether run just shy of an unlucky 13 minutes. She, along with a handful of other acts who say they hail from the Middle East, are repurposing black metal's historically anti-Christian ferocity to rail against Islam. In doing so, these bands are serving up another example of how art and dissent can intersect in a region where dissent can sometimes have deadly consequences.

Full article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment...am/259680/

[Misanthropik]

I've been waiting for something like this. I LOVE Black Metal - well, all Metal, really - and I've noticed that no band seems to be tackling the glaringly obvious problem with Islam. Culturally, they're all focused on Christianity, which is understandable, but religious oppression exists everywhere. Islam was bound to be fought sooner or later.

Admitedly, though, I cringe a bit at the possible and (let's face it) violent backlash it may cause.

Oh well. No metal comes without a bit of danger, right?

[Quidsane]

I'm old school, so when I think of Black Metal, I think of Venom!

"We are brought forth into this world with nothing..."

[amyb]

There's been anti-Islam BM for some time now, i think it's just now getting more news coverage though.

Christianity is an obvious target for bands that come from scandinavia or the US,though. Some band would probably rather avoid Islam for obvious reasons. Making fun of Christians, usually the worst thing that happens is fines or something if you play in certain countries. Or protests, which just bring more publicity.

Of course there's also anti-Judaism, but the bands tend to make it racist against Jews instead of making it against the religion, which is why I consider NSBM to be BM's retarded brother.