When metal unites
Getting introduced to a much-misunderstood genre of music can be a lesson to remember, writes Elena Koshy
THEunearthlyscreamthatsuddenly fills my darkened car like an unleashed bansheealmost causes me to jump out of my skin. Okay, so maybe trying out The Kill Room Journal album in an almost empty carpark late at night isn’t one of my most well thought-out ideas. “Music. it’s just music,” I murmur comfortingly to myself.
The grinding music, discordant guitar riffs and the otherworldly voice belonging to Madec, the lead singer of Iron Moth, emerging from my CD player come as a shock to my system. I briefly wonder if my mother would reach out for her Bible and rosary to exorcise me if she ever discovered that my music taste from good old vanilla Whitney has been replaced with that of guttural rants growling “Long to see you burningggggggggggggg. long to see you screamingggggggggg.”
It’s a lot to get used to. Metal music can definitely appear forbidding to the outsider because it frequently feels deliberately unintelligible and hostile; as if it’s trying to ward off anyone who doesn’t display sufficient commitment. The dark lyrics, angry dissonant music riffs, illegible and mostly ominous-looking Iron Moth performing at a gig in Sitiawan.
band logos, coupled with the baffling array of microcosmic sub-genres are more than enough to drive the average mainstream music fan away.
Don’t worry about trying to understand the genre. There are just too many to figure out. Are you a fan of technical brutal death metal or blackened sludge metal? Do you eschew grindcore metal in favour of speed metal? Did you just understand all of that? No? Listened to any of it? Probably not. “Alot of underground metal is quite hard to listen to from a beginner’s perspective. If you’re listening to it cold for the first time, it can translate to just noise,” remarks 44-yearold Madec.
Just an hour before, I was looking despairingly at the amused members of metal band Iron Moth as they tried to initiate me into the world of underground metal — the stuff that exists and thrives in another dimension to the stadium-filling, multi- platinum-selling world of Metallica, KISS and AC/DC.
“There are many genres to metal. From hard rock, heavy metal, speed metal, death metal, black metal, thrash metal. Do you have a piece of paper? I can write it for you!” explains guitarist Aizat with a grin. Every genre has a hinterland but none quite like heavy metal’s vast, vibrant labyrinth that finds roomforeverything. Literally anything. From stuff so extreme it counts as avantgarde experimental music, to artistes painstakingly recreating the sound of longgone bands no one outside underground metal has heard of in the first place, metal musichasspreadits darkwingssowidethat it appears to have spawned a proliferation of sub-genres.
“What’s your type of music?” I ask finally. “Blackenedaceed SSludgeudge Metal!”ea repliesepes Aizata
earnestly. What? My perplexed face elicits laughter around the table. The band (minus their drummer Tajul), comprising Madec, Khian, Man and Aizat, sit around the table looking unremarkably normal. Where are the tattoos, crazy hair and piercings? I wonder aloud.
“It’ss aall aboutabou thee music,” explains softspoken full-time mus sician Khian. “Besides, we’re all working !” chips in bassist Man wryly. Lead vocalist v Madec then spends a few w minutes explaining his double e life to me. By day, he works at a an IT company. By night howe ever, he is Madec, the charismatic frontman of Iron Moth, singing The Kill K Room Journal, part of the oeuvre that t also includes The Hastie Fir re (Peter Dinsdale) and The BBurial Chamber. The Kill RRoom Journal album, Khi an tells me, has just be en released early this month m on Jan 6.
METALHEAD M MISCONCEPTION The musicians are reluctant to disclose their actual names, preferring to use the monikers of their public personas. It’s the sort of selfpreservation that’s unsurprising owing to the fact that this cultural phenomenon continuestobeathorn to the sides of both fundamentalists f and ne ervous authoritarians, wh ile at the same time being g largely ignored by most of the mainstream media a.