rock in a hard place: saudi arabia's underground heavy metal scene
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Say you were born and raised in Saudi Arabia andwhen you got to a certain age you decided you
liked heavy metal music and wanted to starta band. You’d be asking for trouble, right?
by orlando CrowCroft
In A HArd
P l Ac e november 2010 e s q u i r e 1 1 3
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As one of the only doom bands in Saudi Arabia, Grieving Ageare ying the ag for a genre known for slow and heavy songsthat can clock in at over fteen minutes. The band’s singer,thirty-year-old Ahmed Mahmoud (centre), is a veteran ofJeddah’s scene. But gigs in the kingdom are rare, and bandsoften travel overseas to play
Grieving Age and Wastedland (below right/ left) performing in
Egypt; and Creative Waste (below centre) in New York
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e’ve been up And down
the roAd A dozen or
So timeS beore I realise
the scenery hasn’t changed.
Ahmed Mahmoud is driving his beat-up silver Mazda,
the stereo blasting industrial
German death metal and we’ve been shouting to
each other over the uzz o guitars and roar o the
vocals. “Where are we going again?” I ask. “HMV,”
Ahmed replies, mildly rustrated, and waves his
hand towards a nearby mosque.
This is Jeddah, the “liberal” heart o Saudi
Arabia, but that doesn’t mean HMV stays open
during prayers. Like everything else in the kingdom
— the malls, the shops and restaurants — it closes
its doors and kicks out the customers ve times a
day, every day. So we drive up and down the empty
our-lane highway that intersects the Pizza Hut and
Starbucks outlets o new Jeddah; up and down and
around the roundabouts, until we hear the call to
prayer sound out across the city and then subside
once more to silence. “Now we go,” says Ahmed.
We’d met hal an hour earlier at my fea-pit hotelin Jeddah’s old town, a collection o dusty souks
and broken buildings that sprawls along the city’s
industrial waterront, a long way rom the malls
and villas o the city suburbs. Ahmed arrived late,
wearing sawn o black jeans and motorbike boots.
He had a shaved head, long-ish beard and thick
glasses. His black T-shirt read, simply, Save Milk,
Drink Beer. He shook my hand and apologised or
making me wait, “Welcome to Jeddah,” he said, with
just the aintest touch o irony.
As rontman o GrievinG AGe, almost
certainly Saudi Arabia’s only doom metal band,
Ahmed is one o the stalwarts o the kingdom’s
music scene. Doom, a sub-category o heavy metal,
A th hah n bat down on ryadh’conct, tl and gla, a dozn yong mnlg amp and dm onto a makhft tag.
Gta a tnd, mcophon ttd, jokxchangd, and an atmoph of p-ggxctmnt hang n th a.
it anoth and-blown mm aftnoonn Jn 2009, and th momnt what t haall bn ladng p to. Not j t th wkof ppaaton, lt of nam, tckt andagmnt wth vn own, bt ya — a flldcad — of k, battl won and lot, poplthatnd wth jal, clandtn wbt and
ct codng tdo. stll th gg wnt on,and th cowd gw. Now, tonght, n ryadh,sad Aaba, t’ th fnal tt.
By th nd of th nght a dozn popl wll batd, th pmnt confcatd. Chagwll b lvd, angng fom dg dalng tosatanm and th lv of two yong mn wllchang fov. On, a sad ctzn, wll pndalmot a ya n jal and anoth, a 24-ya-old syan, wll b dpotd and bannd fom
tnng to th kngdom. All for playing music; more specifically, for playing heavy metal music.
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is epitomised by mercilessly heavy, slow
songs, some o which clock in at more
than teen minutes. Others — like those
by Caliornia’s scene veterans Sleep —
can last up to an hour. In the West, Doom
has a small, mostly stoned but very active,
ollowing. In Saudi it’s just small.
Not that it bothers Ahmed. His band
recorded its rst album two years ago
in a recording studio in Dammam, on
Saudi Arabia’s east coast, and is currently
working on a ollow-up. He has also
collaborated with two o the biggest
names in the genre, Sweden’s Katatonia
and England’s My Dying Bride, with the
ormer agreeing to produce and mix the
Grieving Age album or ree ater Ahmed
contacted them via the Internet. As we sit
in the two-storey caé attached to HMV
— divided so that women can sit upstairs,
men downstairs — Ahmed happily recalls
the experience o working with his heroes.“We are so happy and proud o the
record,” he says, in almost aultless
English that he regularly apologises
or. “Dan Swanö (rom Katatonia) did a
remarkable job mixing and mastering it.
He added his magic touches and evolved
the whole sound into something that we
never expected.”
Music is, quite literally, Ahmed’s lie.
He imports CDs and distributes them
to local music stores, and appreciates
the irony that while he is educating the
Saudi youth on bands like Metallica with
one hand, he is also inficting Justin
Timberlake records on it with the other.
His lie is a more-or-less constant to-
and-ro with Saudi Arabia’s censors. Few
would be aware, when glancing at the
well-stocked shelves o Jeddah’s HMV,
that every one o the albums here — rom
Celine Dion to Carcass — has been ought
over by this thirty-year-old metal-head.
It’s no surprise that he has witnessed the
Saudi music scene change dramatically
over the last ten years.
“Man, things have changed so much”
he says, shaking his head at the memory.“Back in the nineties it was impossible to
get CDs. The only way was to ask riends
or amily to bring them in rom Europe,”
he explains.
“But at the same time it was damn
valuable and you would just know it
by learning the hard way. Nowadays
everybody can have the whole
discography o a band with one click.”
The Internet may have removed some
o the mystique, but it has been invaluable
to the band scene in Saudi Arabia, and
is solely responsible or uniting Riyadh,
Jeddah and the Eastern Province.
in 1993, and is spoken o with reverence
by younger members o the scene. Another
Jeddah stalwart is wASted LAnd,
a ve-piece death metal band that
appeared in a BBC story about Saudi
Arabian metal back in 2006. Then there
is the renowned Saudi band, Sound of
rubY, ronted by Mohammed Al-Hajjaj
and still playing and recording albums
almost teen years ater their ormation
in Dammam back in 1996.
Nowadays there are more than
thirty rock and metal bands that havemade themselves known to ellow
ans in Saudi Arabia, with at least our
recording studios and probably dozens
more makeshit set-ups in bedrooms
and garages across the kingdom. Bands
come and go, suddenly appearing on
MySpace or on Saudi orums and then
disappearing just as quickly.
These bands occupy a strange place
in Saudi Arabian society. Playing music
is legal, but so many o the activities
associated with it are prohibited:
gatherings o more than ty people
and the mixing o men and women,
Pre-MySpace, ans in those scenes
had no idea there were bands in
other regions. Nowadays Ahmed has
developed contacts all over the country.
“I there was no Internet we wouldn’t
know anyone unless they were our next
door neighbour,” he says.
This didn’t stop bands rom making
names or themselves, and some o those
early guys have ended up as legends.
Hasan Hatrash, a journalist or Arab
News, the country’s largest English-
language daily newspaper, ounded classic
rock outt moSt of uS in Jeddah back pho
tography:vanessa
america/hasan
hatrash
1 1 6 e s q u i r e november 2010
“I guess they just find it strange that desert people are creating such aheavy controversial music. Maybe they still can’t believe that we don’t live in tents anymore”
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or example. Then there are the other
obvious associations rightly or wrongly
attached to heavy metal music, such as
Satanism, alcohol, drugs, and subversion.
The upshot is that bands start o with
a MySpace site and might even record
an album. But then attention — rom
parents, riends or employers, as well
as the authorities — is such that they
subsequently back o, the site gets
outdated and the band slips into obscurity.
None o these actors worry Ahmed
though, as he ficks through the shelves o the considerable metal section and shoots
the breeze with the sta, most o whom
know him well. His concerns or Grieving
Age are more mundane: the guys are all
too busy with their work and their wives
and their jobs to rehearse. In act, he’s
not even sure why the outside world is so
interested in metal in Saudi Arabia.
“I guess they just nd it strange
that desert people are creating such
heavy controversial music,” he says, hal
joking, hal disappointed. “Maybe they
still can’t believe that we don’t live in
tents anymore.”
hiLe the more
LiberAL JeddAh
iS A breedinG
Ground for YounG
metAL bAndS, it’s
actually the east coast that is the engine
driving the country’s scene. The Eastern
Province is home to the SAudi rock
And metAL SocietY (SAMETAL)and has hosted six out o the eight
gigs held in Saudi Arabia over the last
ten years. The guys in Al Khobar and
Dammam have the benet o proximity
to Bahrain, Dubai and the Levant, all o
which have played host to Saudi bands
unable to nd venues at home.
Fawaz Al Shawa and Bader Husain
have been involved in the eastern scene
since it began, but tonight in the ve(ish)-
star Gul Pearl hotel in Manama, they
are an unlikely pair. Twenty-six year-old
Bader is a geophysicist with an ultra-
condent manner. He’s wearing a smart
dark suit and doesn’t seem at all out
o place in the hotel lobby, where we
sit surrounded by Western businessmen
drinking overpriced beers. Fawaz could
not be more dierent. The twenty-three-
year-old MBA student is wearing loose
jeans, a black Nasum T-shirt and speaks
with a pronounced American accent.
His head is shaved, he has a short beard,
and his quiet demeanour contrasts starkly
with Bader’s mile-a-minute enthusiasm.
As an Asian girl in a glamorous green
dress plucks out dated hits rom a goldenharp, I toy with the idea o ordering a
beer — this is Bahrain ater all — but
when Bader orders a Shirley Temple
and Fawaz an iced coee, I opt or tea.
The two o them have driven over the
King Fahd Causeway to see me, simply
because I happen to be in Bahrain or
the night. They’ve come equipped with
laptops, fyers, gig posters, pictures and
a DVD Bader made documenting the
rst metal show they arranged in Saudi
Arabia. He proudly tells me he has our
jobs: organising the metal scene is one
o them.
Fawaz Al-Shawaf(left), frontman ofCreative Waste, agrindcore outtfrom Saudi’s eastcoast. The bandplayed two showsin the U.S. in 2010,and will play the
Maryland Deathfestin 2011. Much of thecountry remains aconservative place(right) meaningfans (below) arelimited to a fewprivate gigs inrented halls orexpat compounds
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Since its oundation by Sound o Ruby
bassist Kamal in 2003, SAMETAL has
become a ocal point or the Saudi metal
scene, providing inormation about bands,
recent releases and a popular web orum.
Fawaz and Bader have been involvedin SAMETAL since the early years, but
took over the running o the orum in
early 2008. Fawaz is also the singer o
creAtive wASte, Saudi Arabia’s
only grindcore band, and is trying hard
to popularise a genre made amous by
British grind legends Napalm Death.
Fawaz lights up when mentioning
Creative Waste, and rightly so — last
month the band played two shows in the
U.S., and has been invited to join the bill
on the Maryland Deathest next year.
He speaks o the rst SAMETAL gig
with a nostalgia that dees his years.
SAMETAL I and II, as the shows were
known, were the glory years or the
East Coast scene; a time when gigs
went ahead, new bands sprang to lie,
and the older guys started to dream o a
coming renaissance. Their eelings were
premature, as they would later nd out,
but as the pair pu away on Dunhill
cigarettes and laugh over Bader’s pictures
o the show, it is obvious how important
the events were to them.
“We just rented an empty room.
All o the equipment, even the cables,we had to borrow or buy. We set it all up
ourselves,” recalls Fawaz.
The laptop video ootage o SAMETAL
I shows the stage curtains open to reveal
the our members o Sound o Ruby.
They rst look down at their instruments,
as i nervous, then gaze out at the baying
crowd as the drummer starts a heavy
our-beat. In the background you can
see a set o grubby beige curtains, which
gives the impression they are playing in
someone’s ront room. The long-haired
singer smiles, sings his rst note, and
Bader can’t help but smile.
“I love this moment. I’ll never orget
it,” he says, staring intently at the small
screen. Ater a ew seconds, he points at
some guys head-banging in the crowd.
“Most o them are bald now,” he laughs.
Saudi bands basically have twooptions when they want to play live.
Either they rent a space on the outskirts
o town — a villa or a arm — or they
play at an expat compound, where laws
orbidding public gatherings and men
and women intermingling are more lax.
Four out o six o Saudi Arabia’s live
shows since 2001 have taken place in
the ormer, rom Dammamest, which
attracted just twenty-ve people, to
SAMETAL II, which saw 160 turn out or
an evening eaturing six bands.
That was 2005, and 2006 saw the rst
gig in Jeddah, titled Metal Resurrection,
ollowed by SAMETAL III, which
saw ve hundred people pack into an
expatriate compound in Khobar.
Shows ollowed in Riyadh in 2007 and
again in Khobar in 2008, and or a while
it began to look like things were really
changing. Then came Riyadh 2009, an
event that neither Bader or Fawaz want
to talk about, but one which has had
lasting implications or every band in
the kingdom. The bust-up o that gig,
the arrests, the attention it drew, had
everyone running scared — and still does.There have been no gigs since, and no one
really knows when that is likely to change.
The Riyadh show had come out o the
successes o Jeddah and the SAMETAL
gigs, and ans in the Saudi capital wanted
to give something back. The problem was
that in their enthusiasm they got carried
away. On that night, in the summer o
2009, the organisers sold some seven
hundred tickets, but the expat compound
only admitted our hundred. The three
hundred people outside who had paid 150
riyals upront were angry, someone called
the police, and the rest is history.
“Ater that incident I went online and
shut down everything, because I didn’t
want to get in trouble,” explains Bader.
“I’d just got married, I had my job and my
lie, and I didn’t want problems because o
the ault o others.”“They got reckless, it has to be said,”
Fawaz agrees as he snaps the laptop shut
and motions to the waiter or the bill.
“I don’t have a problem with people
trying to do it; it’s just whatever they’re
doing is aecting what you started.
It aects everyone.”
reeze of the dYinG
were one of the bAndS
on the biLL in Riyadh and,
despite the outcome, guitarist
Majed counts it as one o their
best ever shows. The six-piece death
metal band had let by the time the police
arrived, but Majed admits that things
have not been the same since. Not that it
was the rst time his band had had a run
in with the authorities.
Majed, an English teacher by
proession, hails rom Jeddah, but when
I speak to him over a crackling phone line
he’s in Dammam, working as a teacher.
Eighteen months ago he was playing withhis band when the police busted up a gig
and arrested one o their members. The
cops quickly realised that the show was
not the den o iniquity they rst thought,
and let him go. “They were searching or
drugs and alcohol, but we don’t allow any
o that into our shows,” he explains.
Given that the genre has attracted
such inamy or its use o satanic
iconography and violent reerences,
it seems obvious rom the outside why
Saudi Arabia remains so paranoid
about heavy metal. But the bands are
universally dismissive o the view that
Putting on gigsin Saudi Arabiais a complexarrangement. Thebands have to nda venue — usually
an empty hall orprivate villa — thenbuild a stage,borrow equipment,sort out the sound,
sell tickets andorganise thebands. All of thishas to be donewithout provoking
attention from theauthorities, whohave a tendency tocrash the party
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their music is contrary to Islam. When
I’d questioned Ahmed about this,
he sounded rustrated, as i he’d been
asked the same question many times
beore. “Metal has nothing to do with
the religion. Music is music, what hasreligion got to do with it?”
Majed also thinks the publicity and
accessibility aorded by the Internet
has been a mixed blessing. On the one
hand, he is able to promote his band
to metal ans anywhere; on the other,
it means any idiot with a webcam can
speak to the world. One such example,
that made headlines earlier this year,
was a young man who appeared on
MTV wearing a subversive T-shirt
telling a reporter about the suppression
o the metal scene in Saudi Arabia.
“People see that and they think we’re
all like that. The authorities have always
hated metal music and stu like that
gives them an excuse to act against us.
They see these people on the Internet
and they say: ‘This is metal music, this
is what you guys believe in: Satanism
and upside-down crosses.’ I mean, what
the ***? That’s not metal. It’s these
people who cause the problems,” he
explains, angrily.
And Majed is right. It is a cruel
irony that every time there has been
a crackdown in Saudi Arabia it hasbecause bands or individuals have made
too much noise. In Riyadh, it was the
over-selling o tickets, in Jeddah it was
because the religious police had heard
about the show on the Internet. Old
school veterans like hAtrASh have
been dealing with this same problem or
years — he was arrested in the 1990s or
organising a show in a local restaurant.
Attention has always caused trouble or
the Saudi metal scene, and so they are
let walking a ne line between wanting
to play and promote their music, and not
wanting to draw attention to themselves.
But it is also true that, until last
year, very ew people had actually been
given signicant jail time or playing
or organising shows in Saudi Arabia.
Even in Riyadh, the two organisers
were jailed and deported or allowing
the mixing o sexes at the show, not ororganising the show or playing music,
both which were actually perectly legal
within the connes o a private venue.
This ambiguity, o course, is both a
blessing and a curse or Saudi Arabian
musicians — it means that they never
know how ar to push until it is too late.
Saudi Arabia is ar too complex
to second guess how things will map
out, but Fawaz is optimistic about the
uture. Sure, right now, metal bands are
keeping their heads down, but there
are progressive orces in play in Saudi
Arabia, and the conservatives cannot
hold back the tide orever. It could be
some time beore SAMETAL IV, V or VI,
but as long as the bands keep playing,
continue to develop their talent and,
like Creative Waste, get recognition
outside o the Arabian Peninsula,
anything is possible.“Things are changing right now,”
Fawaz told me as we got up leave the
Gul Pearl Hotel in Bahrain; me back
to Dubai, him and Bader back across
the twenty-seven kilometre King Fahd
Causeway to a country that can oten
seem like another planet — even i it is
just an hour away. “A lot o people don’t
think so but it ’s happening. Everything
rom gas stations to parking meters,” he
said, and then looked me in the eye, his
voice getting quieter, his manner even
more sincere. “Saudi Arabia is changing,”
he said. “I can eel it.”
“Metal has nothing to do with the religion.Music is music, what has religion got to dowith it?”
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