Metal culture thriving in Botswana, Afghanistan

In Botswana, a generation of people taking classic heavy metal and making it their own. Photo by Frank Marshall.

When people think of heavy metal music, I think many still think of the United States in the 1980s: Tipper Gore, the PMRC, kids throwing the horns, bulldozers driving over CDs, sawblades on codpieces, pentagrams — all that business. Metal has come a long way since then, but it’s still the music of rebellion, wherever that rebellion happens to be.

Take, for example, Botswana, where South Africans have adopted the leather and studs. They’re listening to the classics, but also playing their own heavy metal.

For these folks, one thing that seems to appeal about heavy-metal culture is the unique combination of devoted tribalism and sanctioned aggression:

“There’s a strong sense of camaraderie amongst them. That’s the first thing you’ll notice about them as an outsider coming in. They’ve got a very strong bond and friendship with each other.

“They’re very physical. At the shows, you don’t just shake their hands. They’ll grab your hand and shake you around.

“They embody the very aggressive elements of metal. It’s an expression of power. Everything is an expression of power for them, from the clothes to the way they speak to the way they walk.”

Unlike the Hell’s Angels they are said to resemble, these rockers hang out on the streets of Botswana at night, making sure people get home safely and scaring away thugs. The music seems to give them hope, optimism, a sense of belonging.

In Afghanistan, it’s not all that different. There, young musicians are coping with the recent war and its aftermath by playing in bands with names such as District Unknown, and songs titled “Two Seconds After the Blast” and “The Beast.” It’s not so far from Leyton to Kabul.

District Unknown’s founding brothers, Qasem and Pedram Foushanji, discovered heavy metal by way of Metallica — and fell in love:

The brothers immediately took a liking to the fast-paced, aggressive sound, saying a childhood spent amid war and violence helped them to connect with the music.

“I feel most comfortable playing metal music because you go out there in everyday life and you get a lot of negative energy,” Pedram said. “Playing metal makes me feel better. It does for me what meditation does for others.”

The bandmates are part of a new rock-music school in Kabul, which would have been banned under the Taliban. Even now — as in many Middle Eastern countries — metal bands do not enjoy full freedom; the band frequently wears face masks to avoid persecution from religious conservatives.

Some people were never able to make sense of why metal fans love this noisy, angry, uncompromising music as much as they do. By looking at metal fans worldwide, we can gain a better sense of its appeal. It’s best loved among young men (though there are many female fans as well) who are experiencing a rift between their current reality and the one they believe is ideal. They’re undergoing stress, tension and alienation — and perhaps facing threats or violence. Whether that violence is taking place in a warzone or a city, or threatened at home or at school, or perceived from society at large, doesn’t matter. Metal provides a way of meeting the world’s aggression halfway, and making peace with it.

Best way to piss off a customer: write “Satanic” symbols on the underside of her car

The oil change of the beast.

An oil-change mechanic at a Walmart in Ft. Worth is in hot water after a customer discovered some graffiti on the underside of her Mustang. The woman claims the graffiti (above) reads “666,” and includes an upside-down cross and pentagram.

(Of course, I’m wondering if it doesn’t have a right-side-up pentagram, a regular cross, and “999.” Maybe he’s a supporter of Herman Cain’s tax plan. Right?)

A worker at another Walmart tipped her off to the writings, pointing out that they were written in the same color blue used by most Walmart oil-change stations. She remembered having a bad encounter last time she’d had her oil changed, at a Walmart in a different part of Ft. Worth. Here’s what she said:

“He had an attitude,” the customer says about the Walmart worker who she believes is responsible for the writing. “Very sassy. By the time it was all said and done, I spent about three hours at that Walmart just for an oil change.”

This all sounds very fishy to me. Was the attitude problem 100% on the mechanic’s side of the situation? That’s really beside the point. Here’s what she said about the writings:

“Who does that? Being the Satanic symbols, it puts a bad omen. I mean, what if it’s a curse?”

It is not a curse. It’s a random assortment of symbols associated with rebellion against Christianity. When you look up Satanic curse on Google, what do you see? A bunch of gossip and hearsay. You don’t see these symbols (and certainly not all put together). You don’t even see any examples of real Satanic curses, because it’s just not that common and it’s not done based on a formula.

This is just like any other vandalism — it’s there to freak you out, to get a rise out of you, and it only works because we have such fearful misconceptions about these symbols.

And it worked. Not only did it frighten this customer, but it’s now all over the Internet.

I’m not saying the Walmart worker should have done this. Of course he shouldn’t have. But this is no different from him writing “fuck you” on the underside of the car. There’s no Satanism, no magic, behind it.

So let’s please just take some deep breaths and move on.

How not to get hysterical about a pentagram

Pentagrams and walls seem to go hand in hand — like bored teens and vandalism. Photo by Flickr user The Trousered Ape.

As the weather turns warmer, kids in suburban and rural areas go outside. They’re bored. They’re looking for something to do. They’re angry, or at least irritated. Maybe they have a magic marker in their back pocket. They’re walking through town, maybe past a church, and an idea strikes them.

Churches in Santa Rosa, California, and Prairie Grove, Arkansas, have suffered recent vandalism — one more seriously than the other. In Santa Rosa, The Church of the Incarnation was tagged with a few pentagrams and other designs. In Prairie Grove, the Illinois Chapel Baptist Church has been vandalized repeatedly over the years, culminating with arson late last month.

Two different cases, in two different parts of the country, reported in two very different ways. Let’s look, shall we?

From Arkansas Matters:

A church is set ablaze in Prairie Grove and officials find satanic symbols spray-painted on the building.

From the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:

The Church of the Incarnation on Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa was tagged with possible Satanic graffiti on Wednesday afternoon, and police said they may have a suspect.

Hmm. One seems more cautious than another. Let’s look again.

Prairie Grove:

“Devil worshiping signs, you know, and stuff, this is nothing but the Devil … People that does this stuff, they are lost … They haven’t the slightest what hell is really about.”

But everyone we spoke with said, there is one thing still standing strong, and that is their faith.

“The Devil can’t beat us down, not as long as we hold faith in Him … I know the good Lord is with us,” said Burnett.

Santa Rosa:

[Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Mike] Lazzarini said the suspect also tagged St Luke Evangelical Lutheran Church, as well as other buildings and signs.

“It’s not church specific,” he said.

A pentagram is a five-pointed star connected with lines considered by some to have magical connotations, and to have satanic meaning when inverted with two points up.

Lawrence said while the pentagrams are potentially upsetting to members of the church, “it’s not enough to make us feel threatened.”

You could chalk up the sensationalism of the Arkansas article to the fact that the crime is more serious, but there have been plenty of times when graffiti like Santa Rosa’s has been reported in a tone more like Prairie Grove’s. In fact, more alarmist reporting tends to be the norm. The Press Democrat reporters offer something refreshing: a report of the crime that doesn’t hysterically imply that the Devil controlled the vandal’s hand — or did the dirty deed himself.

The fact remains, most such vandalism is made by bored, aimless people — kids especially — and not Satanists with an anti-Church agenda. Reporters should write their articles this way, unless they know for certain who the suspect is, and what his/her motives are.

And yet, it’s still plenty interesting to read. Factual reporting that doesn’t descend into fear-mongering. When’s the last time you saw that in a story like this?

Reporters need a little “Pentagram 101″

The tetgragrammaton pentagram, pictured above, is not a “Satanic” pentagram, even if a news reporter tells you it is. Even if it’s in Texas.

Apparently a news crew in Hidalgo County, Texas, “stumbled on” a worship site they somehow think is “Satanic.” Alas, what they posted is only a teaser for a news item that aired on last night’s Action 4 10 o’clock news:

An Action 4 News crew has discovered what some believe is a ‘Satanic’ worship site in a rural area of Hidalgo County.

The site is located in a field littered with pentagrams, religious objects, paraphernalia and shows very recent signs of use.

Action 4 News spoke with neighbors and law enforcement officials about the site.

Okay. Now check out the photos that ran with this teaser. That isn’t a “Satanic” symbol at all; it’s a tetragrammaton pentagram. Many, many Christians know exactly what the tetragrammaton is: it’s the 4-letter name of God.

I know it can be difficult to tell your pentagrams apart. Good thing there’s such a thing as the Internet, where reasonable people can go to do their research before frightening loads of residents into thinking a) Satanists are scary and b) they’re running around hold “rites” in public where anyone can come across them. Satanists are no scarier than Christians, who are also known to hold their rites in public places, called churches.

So what, exactly, is the tetragrammaton pentagram, and who uses it? Well, according to altreligion.com:

19th century occultist Eliphas Levi constructed this pentagram. It is commonly interpreted as a symbol of mankind, as many pentagrams are. However, it is a symbol of many things that unite in the existence of mankind, as is evidence by the variety of additional symbols involved.

In addition to the name of God, this pentagram includes symbols of the Sun and Moon, Venus and Mercury, Alpha and Omega, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the four elements, a caduceus, and a pair of eyes representing spirit.

Although this symbol could be used by anyone wanting to honor the union of opposites, Levi’s work heavily influenced followers of Thelema and Hermeticism. Neither of which, by the way, are Satanic.

None of this is to say there would be anything wrong with this worship site if it were Satanic — this blog has stood up for peaceful Satanists plenty of times. On the other hand, if reporters are going to return to this kind of Geraldo Rivera-style fear-mongering about alternative faiths, they could at least get their facts straight. Not that Rivera did, but the news world has had at least 20 years to learn from his mistakes.

It’s important for reporters to get their facts straight when reporting on these situations (or better yet, not report on them at all, since they’re protected under the First Amendment and aren’t really newsworthy). The more people are made to misunderstand and be afraid of alternative spiritualities, the more discrimination there will be against people who belong to those spiritualities. And discrimination is no good for anybody.

Has a news report ever misrepresented your religious beliefs in any way? If so, how? What, if anything, did you do about it?