“Heavy metal is the ideal soundtrack to the bloody conflict raging in Baghdad right now. The city boasts a macho crowd-guns for hire, thrill-seeking journalists, war profiteers, kamikaze insurgents-and metal holds machismo in very high regard. Of course, Acrassicauda, the band at the center of the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad, which opens the New York Underground Film Festival April 2 (a DVD release comes later this year), was not born of war-torn, modern-day Iraq, but rather a much less openly violent society.
Baghdad’s metal scene grew from a small community of teenagers with a shared love of American music-many of the most accomplished and well-known Iraqi groups got their start covering Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne. In the late 1980s, bands like Scarecrew performed regularly to sold-out crowds of headbangers and moshers, albeit in small halls and with almost no commercial backing. By the late ’90s, the scene had cooled slightly, though a few bands, like Converse and Passage, still played regularly for packs of fans numbering in the low hundreds.”
(via The Village Voice)
(“Heavy Metal in Baghdad” site)
