Rants: Books On Malay Heavy Metal? 4 comments

1- How many books you think we have out there which deals with the Malaysian heavy bands or scene in general? None. Zilch. Nada. Why? Because Malaysians lack the interest to put things on record. "On record" here refers to readable materials i.e. books. Which is kinda pathetic and sad at the same time.

2- There are of course a few pages dedicated to Malaysian heavy metal in some magazines here and there but come on. 30 years of heavy metal in a couple of glossy pages, which most of the time, were not even written by heavy metal enthusiasts, is not enough. Mr. Abdul Aziz Ittar, you sir, need to do something about this.

3- Man, the history of Malaysian heavy metal is indeed a colorful and dramatic one and i bet that it would easily fit at least in a few hundred pages worth of readable materials. Why we Malaysians does not find it necessary to record it all in a proper book remains a mystery to me. Maybe due to the lack of interest to read.

4- If legendary Malaysian bands in the likes of Search, Wings and Cromok or even Sil Khannaz were formed in the United States, I bet there would be at least 4 or 5 books detailing the history of the band. Metallica alone have at least 4. The Beatles got hundreds of them. I believe that it will definitely sell at least couple of thousand copies if not more.

5- I found out just recently that Sweet Charity, a (considered) local hard rock band (credited as the first rock band in Malaysia/Singapore) released an autobiography about themselves. I think it is a good start. Even when Sil Khannaz (local Death Metal/Progressive Death Metal band) chose to release a rockumentary detailing their colorful history, I was in awe and made it a mission to go and buy the CD. And I did just that.

6- Dont you think its time we start recording some history of our own and bring the scene to a whole new level?