.Nothing else matters: Iraqi heavy metal returns
BAGHDAD — At a private dinner club on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad, Muthana Mani screamed threats at a wild-eyed crowd of young Iraqis.
"I'll see you die at my feet! Eternally I smash your face! Facial bones collapse as I crack your skull in half!" he roared.
Two years ago, these kinds of threats in Iraq typically came from members of al-Qaeda, or violent sectarian militias. Saturday night, they were directed at 250 Iraqi fans of heavy metal music who fearlessly donned eye shadow, anarchist pendants and black T-shirts and came out of hiding to attend Iraq's first metal concert in five years.
Throughout the two-hour show, the crowd thrashed about, a sea of sweating bodies and banging heads. They screamed obscenities and broke tables. It was a scene that would have made any American metal fan proud.
It was also another indication of just how much security has improved here. When religious extremists controlled Baghdad's neighborhoods, being a member of heavy metal's unique subculture could amount to a death sentence, says Mani, 21, the lead singer of Brutal Impact, one of the two bands that played the concert.
"If I wore a T-shirt like this one," Mani said in an interview after the show, pointing to a logo of a bleeding skull, "they'd have killed me."
During the most violent years of the war, Iraqi heavy metal fans were besieged by threats from all sides, says Aws Adnan, one of two 21-year-old engineering students who organized the show.
Sunnis accused metal fans of supporting the Mahdi Army because they wore black like members of the Shiite militia, Adnan says. Shiites, meanwhile, suspected fans of being from al-Qaeda because their unkempt goatees resembled the mustacheless beards popular among hard-line Sunni Islamists, he says.
As a result, Iraq's metal musicians practiced for hours behind closed doors. For Latif Ahmed, the long-haired drummer for both bands, the concert was a long-awaited act of revenge against the extremists that he says sent him death threats via text message, warning him to cut his hair, shave his goatee and stop playing drums.
"I just decided that I'd had enough staying home all the time, hiding all the time," said Ahmed, 22. "I decided to do this gig to say that metal exists here, and we are ready to kick some a—."
For many of the band members and fans in attendance, heavy metal has played the role of a trusted therapist during five years of war.
"The youth in Iraq are searching for some way to release their anger, their sadness, and heavy metal is the only way for them to do that," Mani said. "It's the only way for them to feel free."
Even as they recited bloodcurdling calls to violence, however, these headbangers carried a message of unity to fans. Brutal Impact is itself a testament to coexistence with two Sunnis, two Shiites and a Christian among its members.
The second band, Dog Faced Corpse, debuted their original song, Consanguinity. It is a call for brotherhood among Iraqis, explains guitarist Amin al-Jaff.
The band's name refers to apocryphal reports at the height of the killing in 2006 that militants had stitched a dog's head onto a victim's headless body.
Many of the fans at Saturday's concert were attending their first live metal show. They were too young to remember a band called Acrassicauda, which played Iraq's last live metal concert in 2003, just after the U.S. invasion. Its members later fled to Turkey.
"This is something totally new for me. It's craziness and crowded, and it makes you feel so excited," said Zeinab Qassem, a 19-year-old dentistry student in a strappy black dress that stopped well before her knees. It would be a brazen Baghdad outfit even in the best of times.
Next to Qassem stood Nadaa Haidar, a bespectacled girl in an Islamic head scarf, sporting black nail polish for the occasion. Both girls pumped their fists in the air, flaring their pinky and index finger to form devil horns, the universal metal sign, as they sang along to a cover of Metallica's hit song Nothing Else Matters. They didn't miss a beat.
"There's nothing wrong with wearing a veil and listening to metal," said Haidar, 18. "Islam doesn't like metal, but I'm not hurting anyone so it's OK."
Adnan and the concert's other organizer, Mustafa Muhana, pawned their laptop computers, a mobile phone and a bass guitar to pay for the show. They had nearly broken even from $10 ticket sales until the venue's owner approached them after the show and demanded $800 to pay for the damaged tables.
Adnan shrugged. "Anything for metal," he said.
USAToday
"I'll see you die at my feet! Eternally I smash your face! Facial bones collapse as I crack your skull in half!" he roared.
Two years ago, these kinds of threats in Iraq typically came from members of al-Qaeda, or violent sectarian militias. Saturday night, they were directed at 250 Iraqi fans of heavy metal music who fearlessly donned eye shadow, anarchist pendants and black T-shirts and came out of hiding to attend Iraq's first metal concert in five years.
Throughout the two-hour show, the crowd thrashed about, a sea of sweating bodies and banging heads. They screamed obscenities and broke tables. It was a scene that would have made any American metal fan proud.
It was also another indication of just how much security has improved here. When religious extremists controlled Baghdad's neighborhoods, being a member of heavy metal's unique subculture could amount to a death sentence, says Mani, 21, the lead singer of Brutal Impact, one of the two bands that played the concert.
"If I wore a T-shirt like this one," Mani said in an interview after the show, pointing to a logo of a bleeding skull, "they'd have killed me."
During the most violent years of the war, Iraqi heavy metal fans were besieged by threats from all sides, says Aws Adnan, one of two 21-year-old engineering students who organized the show.
Sunnis accused metal fans of supporting the Mahdi Army because they wore black like members of the Shiite militia, Adnan says. Shiites, meanwhile, suspected fans of being from al-Qaeda because their unkempt goatees resembled the mustacheless beards popular among hard-line Sunni Islamists, he says.
As a result, Iraq's metal musicians practiced for hours behind closed doors. For Latif Ahmed, the long-haired drummer for both bands, the concert was a long-awaited act of revenge against the extremists that he says sent him death threats via text message, warning him to cut his hair, shave his goatee and stop playing drums.
"I just decided that I'd had enough staying home all the time, hiding all the time," said Ahmed, 22. "I decided to do this gig to say that metal exists here, and we are ready to kick some a—."
For many of the band members and fans in attendance, heavy metal has played the role of a trusted therapist during five years of war.
"The youth in Iraq are searching for some way to release their anger, their sadness, and heavy metal is the only way for them to do that," Mani said. "It's the only way for them to feel free."
Even as they recited bloodcurdling calls to violence, however, these headbangers carried a message of unity to fans. Brutal Impact is itself a testament to coexistence with two Sunnis, two Shiites and a Christian among its members.
The second band, Dog Faced Corpse, debuted their original song, Consanguinity. It is a call for brotherhood among Iraqis, explains guitarist Amin al-Jaff.
The band's name refers to apocryphal reports at the height of the killing in 2006 that militants had stitched a dog's head onto a victim's headless body.
Many of the fans at Saturday's concert were attending their first live metal show. They were too young to remember a band called Acrassicauda, which played Iraq's last live metal concert in 2003, just after the U.S. invasion. Its members later fled to Turkey.
"This is something totally new for me. It's craziness and crowded, and it makes you feel so excited," said Zeinab Qassem, a 19-year-old dentistry student in a strappy black dress that stopped well before her knees. It would be a brazen Baghdad outfit even in the best of times.
Next to Qassem stood Nadaa Haidar, a bespectacled girl in an Islamic head scarf, sporting black nail polish for the occasion. Both girls pumped their fists in the air, flaring their pinky and index finger to form devil horns, the universal metal sign, as they sang along to a cover of Metallica's hit song Nothing Else Matters. They didn't miss a beat.
"There's nothing wrong with wearing a veil and listening to metal," said Haidar, 18. "Islam doesn't like metal, but I'm not hurting anyone so it's OK."
Adnan and the concert's other organizer, Mustafa Muhana, pawned their laptop computers, a mobile phone and a bass guitar to pay for the show. They had nearly broken even from $10 ticket sales until the venue's owner approached them after the show and demanded $800 to pay for the damaged tables.
Adnan shrugged. "Anything for metal," he said.
USAToday
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