It saddens me to see these things still happening in the 21st century.

This is really sad

Do they worship Satan though? : )

Bravo for keeping the middle-age-mindset alive.

Yeah, do they have to, like, prove they're not satanic?
Also that track is really good

How does one do that? Baptism in a courtroom? Leave the severed goat's head at home?

The government seriously has nothing better to do than arrest a bunch of guys playing music? What a pathetic country.

Also, how are they first arrested now when they formed 2002?

wasn't this exact same article posted a few years ago or is this a different band

"What a pathetic country."
*region. The Middle-East is not a metal-friendly place.

"wasn't this exact same article posted a few years ago or is this a different band"

The same thing happened to another band, Confess.
http://metalinjection.net/metal-crimes/confess-members-sentenced-to-14-years-in-iranian-prison-74-lashes-for-playing-heavy-metal

74 lashes holy fuck

>The Middle-East is not a metal-friendly place


If you sow wind, you will reap whirlwind. Some dumb f*ckers should know better than playing with the beehives there

please don't turn this into an anti-Middle East thing.

Behemoth was banned from performing in Poland, and Nergal was on trial looking at a 2 year sentence. The US held Senate hearings about lyrical content, including songs from Twisted Sister and fucking Cyndi Lauper. This isn't a practice unique to any one country or region.

Yeah but it's not like you could get an actual prison sentence for something like this in the US or Europe.

Did you read what I said about Nergal

Swear I thought this was Chaos Descent, the Iranian metal band that was featured on VICE’s Guide to Iran that debuted earlier in the year. They also make sick metal themselves.

They were legit talking about these exact scenarios happening. At least this wasn’t them.

I did, but do you honestly not see the difference here?

You said he couldn’t get a prison sentence, but he was on trial for breaking a law...?

when things like this happen, people tend to connect the dots like this

Middle Eaterns = Hyper-conservatives, savage, misanthropists

while it looks more like this

The West has f*cked hard the countries there, enforcing fundamentalists to take the power, in order to bring political imbalance in the area and exploit the oil market.

Goes without saying that US imperialism has been an unquantifiable factor in a lot of the horrors in the region, for decades.

poli-sci 98 up in here not 20 comments in

doesn't need political science to go deeper than racist remarks, tbh

I expected nothing less when I clicked, so I said "hey, let's not do this" and was immediately met with it :/

"The US held Senate hearings about lyrical content, including songs from Twisted Sister and fucking Cyndi Lauper. This isn't a practice unique to any one country or region."

Okay, but that sounds like it was in the 80s. When has that happened recently? It probably hasn't.

Well, in Greece, last year, the City Hall decided against the performance of Rotting Christ in a big greek city, because orthodox fundamentalists were against them. Same thing has happened with other bands, theater plays and movies. In the late '90s a woman director was held accountable for filming a child crying in her movie. In the scene context, the child had seen his parents having sex, but in reality there was nothing indecent going on. Many stories like this unfold every year in the west and people are facing legal punishment, but you just don't hear.

Okay I get it's cool to hate america and shit but letting the mongolians, the turks, the british, the soviet union, the arabs, the greeks, and lets be honest the persians themselves off the hook for being 'imperialistic' in the middle east and fucking shit up is a bit unfair.

Fucked up. Gonna try to spare you all a tirade about the intentionally obtuse makeup of Iran's government and the way that it actively opposes the country's young, increasingly liberal population so I'm just gonna say it's fucked up. Rouhani is easily the best president they've had in decades, but there's not much he can do about the continued theocratic stranglehold.

@americanohno Well, nobody lets anyone off the hook, I'm including the role of Europe and Russia when I'm talking about the ''West'' (descriptive term actually, rather than an accurate one). See what's happening right now in Syria, it's a shitstorm, where everyone is trying to get hold of the pie.

I avoided the daily corona numbers to read something better for my morning wake up and unfortunately this comment section was my choice read.

Yo, is it morning there? It's 20:35 here.

I have many plain statements to make on this, so I'm just gonna go with a word salad.

Well I guess we're all going to hell with this then. Because of the speech of common hearts is the speech of civility. And the government hates it.
IT HATESSSS IT.
Forever 21. LET'S STAY DRUNK AND NEVER GROW UP.

This is such a shame, being incarcerated because of a music style you like. Cant believe some of these places are still stuck in the 14th century

Sad and pathetic, but not surprising unfortunately. Archaic mindsets permeate a lot of the 3rd world because of conservative leaders

Fuck Islam

lol at that guy saying US imperialism is to blame basically or a factor in the barbaric islamic doctrine, the problem is ISLAM. It isn't Muslims in general, let me repeat this for you ISLAM is the problem NOT muslims (well not most muslims, anyway)

lol at me then, I guess. But if I can defend my statement, I never claimed that US imperialism is to blame for islam or islamic doctrine.

The problem is muslim LEADERS that exploit islam for their personal gain more than the religious doctrine. Anyhow this isn't the place for a political debate

"Yeah but it's not like you could get an actual prison sentence for something like this in the US or Europe."

what about those kids that got death sentences for a murder they obviously didn't commit cuz the jury thought they were satanists

but yeah islam sucks as much as christianity. Any religion in government will lead to stuff like this

I have opinions about this but am clearly too much of a pussy to post them. So I'll just piggyback on Omair's: The problem is muslim LEADERS that exploit islam for their personal gain more than the religious doctrine. [2]

https://arsames.bandcamp.com/album/immortal-identity

Anyway, here's a link to their album. It's sick, go buy it. They could definitely use the money.

"Sad and pathetic, but not surprising unfortunately. Archaic mindsets permeate a lot of the 3rd world because of conservative leaders"

This really rubs me the wrong way for some reason, no offense mate, but if there is one thing people should not be making at this time are blanket statements like these ones, specially where said 3rd worlds have been either directly or indirectly affected by 1st world colonialism, just saying, religious zealots exist in spades in places like the states as well, and they hold a tighter grip on political legislation than they show.

I'm actually familiar with this band. I only know a few tracks but they were pretty good. Read they had to don masks and go by stage names because they feared being arrested on charges of blasphemy. I thought it was so cool that a place like Iran could spawn brutal death metal bands, but it sucks that they live in fear just because of the music they play.


Check out this insane Cannibal Corpse cover they did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uipdu3kklk

'but yeah islam sucks as much as christianity'

Perhaps the Christianity of two hundred years ago yeah.

Wow what happened to this thread

lyrics talk about god a lot for being a Satanic band

Don't mix up Middle East with Islam.
I personally am going to see Samael performing here in Tel Aviv in October (assuming this corona shitstorm is over by then).

What's the situation over there, Koala? I hear there's a general shitstorm in Israel rn.

@Nikk: I'm originally from Pakistan and the country got fucked thanks to conservative and corrupt leadership over the past few decades, the effects of which we're still suffering today. There are similar cases in several nations in Africa and across Asia, as difficult as it may be to swallow. The lack of education has a huge impact on the ability of religious zealots to brainwash the uneducated folks sadly, and it has lead to huge amounts of unrest and tension within the country. This is why conservative leadership in the 3rd world does more damage than in the West. Anyway, my two cents

Cheers Omair,

Do metal / rock bands in Pakistan also have these kinds of issues?

"doesn't need political science to go deeper than racist remarks, tbh"

thank you, there's a huge lack of social and cultural education in the west as well

@NoTrap: Thankfully not over the last few years since the arts have started to flourish again, but I'm not too familiar with the underground extreme metal scene there nowadays. Our current PM of 2 years is even more inclusive of the arts in that regard so I don't foresee censorship during his tenure. Iran is also one of the more conservative muslim countries from a leadership standpoint so censorship is definitely a bigger problem there, including criticism of the government, religion, etc. There's much more freedom of the press in Pak fortunately

Here's a new Prog metal/djent band if you're curious Fernando ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyvJg9GTKoo

And here's the first black/progressive metal band of Pak from the 90s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Hv-RYScpU&list=TLPQMDQwODIwMjDLpjh-dkDDgw&index=10

Glad to hear it Omair.

That Takatak track is nice ;)

@Mythodea
"What's the situation over there, Koala? I hear there's a general shitstorm in Israel rn."
There's is some political tensions, as usual... nothing exciting or frightening, really

Gonna take a stab and say that it's probably the mixture of religion = bad, the influence of multiple imperialist nations over centuries as well as the particulars of each country's history that collectively result in their current state, but maybe that's a bit out there for some of ya'll.

yeah but can any of you actually defend the horrible shit in the quran, now remember criticizing the quran does not equal ''all everyday muslims are horrible fuck muslims'' its simply that the book is horrible and to defend it in a real way, makes a person a scumbag. the thing is though, most muslims aren't following the book, just like most christians ignore large parts of their book and we should all be grateful

sick track, move to a free country

"Behemoth was banned from performing in Poland, and Nergal was on trial looking at a 2 year sentence. The US held Senate hearings about lyrical content, including songs from Twisted Sister and fucking Cyndi Lauper. This isn't a practice unique to any one country or region."

Did anyone actually go to jail though? And 2 years isnt comparable to 15. Its not the middle easts fault theyve been getting fucked up the ass by imperialism for decades, but dont pretend this is just the norm all over the world. Its not "anti-middle east" to say its not the most metal-friendly region.

@Omair: as a Half Guatemalan, Half swiss living in guatemala right now i can definitely understand where religious zealotism and right wing conservativism go hand in hand, but to apply that bias towards a blanket term as "3rd World" makes people more prone to dismiss it as just another thing that is endemic to empoverished nations when it exits anywhere where these religious conservativism (speaking specifically of this this situation) ideals take root, and that includes the 1rst world as well, i absolutely understand where ur point lays, i just feel its a bit easy to forget that if we dismiss things as just another day in 3rd world land it will make it easy for others who are not exposed or actively involved to dismiss it as well.

"yeah but can any of you actually defend the horrible shit in the quran"

Which horrible shit are you referring to?

That's revelatory coming from someone who wrote "Fuck Islam" since the foundation of it is the Quran. I'm just gonna fill in the blank and assume that you're referring to "organization of religion" when you said that.

I, a Muslim myself who spent a lot of time studying my book, found that most of the middle-eastern Islamic government to be a failure when it comes to representing the Quranic values. It's basically a power-hungry collective backed by blinded conservative individuals within its region. We hate them as much as you do.

Edit: When I said we, I'm referring to people like me.

^

"its simply that the book is horrible and to defend it in a real way, makes a person a scumbag."

This is a really shitty way of looking at it. They're called the people of the book for a reason, all Muslims are going to defend the Quran in a "real" way. You're basically saying that Muslims are cool as long as they're Muslims in name only, but if they take their religion seriously they're scumbags.

Plus religion and cultural practices get conflated together and so you have a deadly combination of a lack of proper education, a conservative society as a whole that has an archaic way practising the religion which is heavily integrate with cultural norms (most of them are hypocrites and may focus on rituals but are shitty human beings that abuse & exploit people, which isn't taught in any major religion, but there you go), and morally & financially corrupt governments that abuse the religious conservatism of the society to their favour. Humans are mostly scumbags and especially those in power, so they can't be used as an ideal representation of religion since most assholes exploit it for personal gain. Colonisation has also had a major impact in the developing world, and the subservient mindset of the "lower classes" is again exploited by politicians to extend their reign followed by nepotism. So families rule over countries for decades and royally fuck them up.

There are a lot of layers & complications, and people need some actual exposure to the society to get a real understanding of all the complexities. It's easy to sit in a more developed country and sneer at entire societies because they're still not as modern as they ought to be. I wish it were that simple honestly

Cheers for OmairSH for pointing those out. Well said.

I want to reiterate that this kind of issue can't be generalized into a statement such as "religion = bad" or "(Insert a subject here) IS the problem". Well, if you're bold enough to make such claims, then have the courage to back it up and make a proper discussion about it. If people are throwing claims and don't bother to do that, then they're part of the problem of this rampant misinformation. It's the same branching reason on why there are anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, you name it. Nobody is immune to propaganda.

"There are a lot of layers & complications, and people need some actual exposure to the society to get a real understanding of all the complexities. It's easy to sit in a more developed country and sneer at entire societies because they're still not as modern as they ought to be. I wish it were that simple honestly."

Exactly this. It's really easy to judge when you have only second-hand knowledge of how these kinds of things work. There's so much more at play in relation to how a society develops than just religion and culture. Environment, class, history, economics, politics, ethnic, squabbles, education, etc. It's never as a simple as "it's Islam's fault" or "it's America's fault," it's all a rich tapestry.

Which brings me back to Arsames. Religion is definitely one part of why the Iranian government has decided to arrest these dudes. It's probably also to do with things like political ideology and freedom of expression. The fact that it's happening now after the band's been together for 20 odd years makes me feel like it might be a reaction to something. There's so much about the context surrounding this that I don't understand.

In any case, it's bullshit.

"does that make where im coming from clear"

Yes buddy. Thanks for the clarification. ;)
It's definitely easy to assume otherwise considering what a few early-commenters have left.

Anyway, humans do suck in general. it's even being acknowledged in the Quran lol (search "2:30"). Gotta do our best to do as much positive things from guidebook you have I guess.