Riffs Over Baghdad

According to the website 'Middle East Online', the only heavy metal band in Baghdad; 'Acrassicauda' (named after a deadly scorpion) have had to flee their native country and escape to neighbouring Turkey, where they are seeking official refugee status. In a phone call to the website, bassist Firas al-Latif claimed: "We dare not go back, we'll be targeted even more than before. We're staying in Istanbul as refugees."

The four Metallica-loving band members recently became the subject of interest in Iraq, after a documentary (Heavy Metal In Baghadad) on their plight as extreme musicians in one of the world's most conservative country's was screened as the Toronto Film Festival. They came together in 2001, quickly gaining local notoriety, as well as attention from US magazine Vice, who ran a feature on the band. After the US-led invasion in 2003, the group were optimistic about their nation's future and even talked of recording an album, but the wave of secretarian violence and suicide bombings has caused them to flee to Damascus, where they remain in hiding.

Now, it's obvious that Iraq is a pretty messed up place, and has been for some time, first under Saddam Hussein and his tyrannical dictatorship, but also the mass fallout after the country was crushed by coalition forces, leaving it in perhaps a worse state than ever before. Nightly 'Death Squads' prowl the streets of Baghdad and other major cities, searching for intellectuals, including musicians, to be snuffed out, as they are seen as a threat to the neo-fascist militants who want to drag Iraq back to the dark ages. In any other situation, labelling a heavy metal musician as an intellectual would be a brilliant thing (for me at least) but in the case of the four brave members of Acrassicauda, it is an instant death sentence.

Fans and performers of metal have long been persecuted the world over for their musical tastes and the way they dress, but it really puts things in perspective when you discover that there are people on the other side of the world risking death for what they believe in. It's also equally shocking that this kind of persecution still exists in the middle east, after four years of fighting and 'regime change', but if a scene that most natives find totally alien can flourish and attract interest, in a place where Western culture is frowned upon, there truly is hope for us all. Let's just pray that it isn't long till the band members, and indeed everyone else living in fear over there don't have to hide anymore.