Rants - Metal : A Malaysian Headbangers journey part 1. 2 comments

Metal : A Malaysian Headbangers Journey

I am writing this to the majestic compositions of Manowar 1988’s Kings of Metal galloping through the speakers bombarding my ears to kingdom come.

Actually being a metal head in Malaysia is not that bad of a deal if you don't mind being judged by the ever intolerant and ignorant society or getting caught wearing corpse paint while attending underground heavy metal concerts or getting your records seized by the custom officer from time to time. I have long accepted the fact that Heavy Metal was, is and always will be a tribal thing. Heavy Metal, this wonderful sick music, gave me some sense of pride, self empowerment and to a certain extent kept my head up high when life was being a hard on me. And one more thing, metal was never meant for fucking Ipods! My name is Hafeez and this is my story.

When I got my first dosage of heavy metal, I was about 13 years old. I think I have already written somewhere in here that I was introduced to heavy metal, not from any heavy metal uncles or any long haired heavy metal friends but from a shitty local tabloid called Harian Metro (a Malaysian daily metro; a still existing local shitty tabloid which regularly glorifies sex related “intelligence” as its major headline and from time to time launches crusades against heavy metal).

Before the life changing revelation, I was just your typical neighborhood adolescent nerd who would listen to whatever there was on the FM radio. Back in the early 90’s, although Hollywood rock, or glam metal or hair metal as some people would call it, was slowly losing its grip back in the United States due to the Seattle/Kurt Cobain’s phenomenon (read: grunge); here in Malaysia, Rock was fighting for her last few breaths against Rap music.

Behold! Its the dudes who ended the spandex phenomenon.

Despite of the matching jumpsuit and baggy pants wearing miggers (Malay niggaz haha) flooding and breakdancing all over the fucking dance floor worshipping their Kriss Krosses, MC Hammers and Vanilla Ices, there were still a couple of decent rock bands hitting the radios with a couple of slow rock numbers trying to relive their glory tight jaguar spandex days of the 80’s.

To be continued...

Rants - Depressive Black Metal? 1 comments

I sure am not going to write anything on Depressive Black Metal. It is just that I am currently listening to some songs that I had composed for my own one man Depressive Black Metal band called Deep and nothing in this post will have anything to do with Depressive Black Metal except for this introductory paragraph. Nobody cares anyway. Bah!

I went web/blog hopping just now. Post metal monster, Isis broke up the other day which was a very big deal to a lot of people and I dont know why. I was never a fan of that band anyway although some of their slow churning sludgy gloomy songs were indeed quite compelling. Sludgy song rules!

Soulfly released another album? Sorry, am not interested. Cavalera Conspiracy rules!

My favorite vocodered singing progressive metal/"jazzy"death metal band Cynic will be releasing an EP titled "Re-Traced". According to Blabbermouth, it contains 4 reinterpretations of some of the songs in their 2009, quoting Metalsucks.net "now legendary" album "Traced In Air" and a new song called "Wheels Within Wheels". Somebody posted the song on Youtube and I cant wait for the next full lenght follow up. They are not using vocoders for that song but retained the falsetto vocals. Cynic rules!

Joey Belladonna will be re-joining Anthrax! He is my favorite Anthrax singer and man, that guy can really sing. I do not know what have happened to John Bush because when Dan Nelson was kicked out of the band, John Bush seemed to be the right person to man the vocals because i thought that Among The Living Belladonna-Anthrax reunion tour that they had in 2005-2007 was just a brief to-the-good-old-days tour. It would be exciting to listen to Belladonna on a new Anthrax song. Among The Living rules!

Korn got a new album? Fuck Korn!

Oh yeah, in case this blog do have any readers, i have scheduled some entries for this month. New entries will automatically be posted on all the dates which have even numbers in them (hahaha, call me an idiot but I really cant figure out what these dates were called). I will randomly post some new entries in between. Just like this one. I rule!

Bands - Zarquum: 1 comments

As usual, there I was minding my own business within the unknown realm of cyberspace, browsing and peeping through some local Malaysian heavy metal band’s MySpace page, trying to sniff what were they up to these days, when I came across with quite a few stunning new bands (well, at least for me) which I think deserves more exposure than Lars Ulrich’s snare sound in St Anger. I Shall first start with this band.

ZARQUUM

At first glance I thought this was a Black Metal band due to its Black Metal-isque name. Then I listened to the songs uploaded and end up asking myself, what kind of Black Metal is this? Zarquum turns out to be a Death Metal band hailing from the muddy banks of Kuala Lumpur. Well, don’t blame me for associating them with Black Metal since the name Zarquum itself means The Fruit of Hell in Arabic. Arabic name? The Fruit of Hell? Its got to be a black metal band. Haha. Well, that was just me being stereotypical.

All bullshits aside, Zarquum plays a very well played technical death metal in the veins of Arsis or Necrophagia maybe. Well, I am not that good in providing references anyway. Seriously, you should give this band a try. The guitars were crunchy enough for my ears, with double guitar riff attacks here and there and not to mention the shreds were like all over the place which reminds me of that French technical band, Gorod. The timing and the tempo changes of the two songs uploaded on their Myspace were unbelievable. It was like jumping on a trampoline on a bad acid trip.

I’ll tip my hat for the solos. Very well played, sirs. The vocals were the typical dual growls and high pitch screams. Nothing can be wrong there. I hear some synths too. Maybe it was added to add some gloominess into the song. Guess what? It worked. My only complaint? Vary the licks.

Give this band a chance to develop and I am very sure that they can be the Malaysian answer to Arsis. Even with the current state of the production quality of Malaysian studios, I can honestly say that these talented guys will give Gorod a run for their money. Try and give the songs a proper listen and tell me what you think. Oh ya, the band is preparing to release a split with another local melodic death metal heroes called Goda, another band worth mentioning band from Shah Alam, Selangor.

Zarquum is Lord Nafkhatul Faza (Vocal) Sir Farex (Guitar) JY (Guitar) and Ajan (Bass).

ZARQUUM MySpace