Arabic Anti-Islamic Legion - a hoax? Anyway, check out some real Iraqi metal


You probably remember my small article on The Arabic Anti-Islamic Legion, a circle of black metal bands allegedly based out of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, that I wrote in early 2011, during the Arab Spring? AAIL were claimed to be comprised of Janaza (the first one-female black metal project from Iraq), تدنيس (aka Tadnees from Saudi Arabia), مسجد الشيطان ( Mosque of Satan from Lebanon), False Allah (from Bahrain), and Seeds Of Iblis (a supergroup featuring members of Janaza and Tadnees). The story of Anahita, an 1984-born Iraqi girl that allegedly was the person behind Janaza, has received much attention not only from underground metal zines, but from some mainstream media outlets as well.
Personally I've posted "Burning Quran Ceremony" by Janaza and "Jihad Against Islam" by Seeds of Iblis on my other blog, but was reluctant to post it here, since it wasn't clear where these bands stand politically.

Now it appears that the whole AAIL thing is most likely a fake - the photos claimed to be those of Anahita and Tadnees actually were stolen from different sources, and there's no independent evidence confirming the existence of False Allah or Desertor (Anahita's former band). Of course it's completely understandable why BM musicians from such countries as Iraq or KSA would want to use fake identities, but the whole story of AAIL doesn't look too credible in general. Remember that lesbian blogger from Damascus who turned out to be 40 y.o. American man based in Scotland? Or the band Rhanawa allegedly from Malawi that stole photos from Orisha Shakpana's myspace? Or Infertile Surrogacy, that was hyped as "the first brutal death metal band from Congo", even though the line "Location: Congo" on their myspace was a very blatant joke? The more I think about that, the more suspicious I become.

As of now, the official site of AAIL is down, and their youtube channel was last updated 3 months ago. Beside the music, it also contains two short video presentations with some text in Arabic (probably atheist/sceptic-themed), which makes me believe that the owner of the channel is at least familiar with the Arab culture. The story of Anahita may be a hoax, but the music attibuted to Janaza and Tadnees could very well be made by an actual Iraqi refugee somewhere in Sweden, or by some pro-Zionist Middle East scholar in the USA or elsewhere in the West. BTW, the story would be much more believable if Seeds of Iblis were claimed to be from Iran. It has both a sizable anti-Muslim underground (moreover, Iran is full of various Satanic cults, some of which have a millenia-long history), and a metal scene of more than just a few bands.

And what if Janaza & Tadnees are real? Just my own guess - they might be some kind of self-hating Arabs, just like we here have self-hating liberals that claim themselves to be "European, not Russian". Who knows. And what confuses me the most - Anahita says in her interview that she turned away from religion after "a Muslim guy" killed her family in a suicide bombing. If it really was an act of sectarian violence - why doesn't she specify the sect which the terrorist belonged to (Sunni/Shia/Salafi/Wahhabi/etc.)? It's very important, and I don't think anyone from Middle East would refer to such an incident just as "done by a Muslim guy"...

...Anyway, we already have a decent number of good Mideastern metal bands that are definitely not fake - a couple of great BM bands from Lebanon, Al-Namrood from Saudi Arabia, Narjahanam and Dhul-Qarnayn from Bahrain, and a whole blog dedicated to North African BM owned by one of my most active readers.

There are also one-female BM projects in Turkey and Azerbaijan. However, the openly anti-religious ones come mostly from more liberal countries, such as Turkey and Lebanon. There's also a lot of unconfirmed rumors about these bands - for example, some sources stated that Learza (Dhul-Qarnayn, Qafas, Kusoof) was hanged in Bahrain for his musical activities. But Learza himself denied these rumors, saying that the indeed had some problems with the religious authorities, but not to the point of death sentence.

Speaking of Iraqi scene, the only BM musician that's confirmed to be from Baghdad is Erragal. His music can be described as Mesopotamian pagan ambient with some BM elements. He also has released some music under the names Almenakru (atmospheric BM / ambient / guitar noise) and Kurgal (dark ambient):

Speaking of more brutal stuff, there's Dog Faced Corpse (and I strongly advice to read their interview, it's quite interesting and informative):

They also mention another death metal band from Baghdad, Sodomophilia, which haven't released any demos yet. Overall it seems like there's already a sizable community of metal (mostly DM) fans in Iraq, but now they keep a low profile due to a recent wave of "emo killings". Actually, metalheads, punks and even rappers were killed indiscriminately along with the "emos" (and I doubt if there even are any actual emo kids in Iraq):




It all reminds me of late 80's here (Russia), when it was quite dangerous for men to wear long hair, and most of self-defined "metalheads" tried to wear as much paraphernalia as possible (just to subsequently get a lot of shit from authorities and gopniks). And of course, let's not forget Acrassicauda, that were originally from Baghdad, but then moved first to Damascus, then to Istanbul, and finally to New York:

P.S. It also worth mention that:

- none of the members of the bands mentioned above has ever heard of The Arabic Anti-Islamic Legion, which makes the whole story even more phony;

- the first openly anti-religious BM release to come from a Muslim country was probably "Violated Hejab" 2005 EP by Weapon (it was recorded in Bangladesh, but then the founder of the project emigrated to Canada).