By Jonny Bakes
Are you sat there quite convinced that the only thing that South Africa has to offer to the alternative music scene is Die Antwoord? Well, prepare yourself to be proven completely wrong (again) as I get myself stuck into another compilation album of African metal. Considering my last foray into African metal (Botswanan to be specific) was pretty successful, there was no way I could turn down the opportunity to pick up the second volume of ‘Fangs’, which showcases what the African metal underground has to offer…
What it has to offer is a huge amount of variety of polished metal from all across the broad metal spectrum. This compilation has something for fans of stoner rock, death metal, post rock and doom metal, whilst throwing in a couple of more obscure varieties too. Overall, if this is a sample of what’s out there in the South African metal scene, then there is certainly a lot to be excited about. With 14 tracks from 14 completely different sounding bands, I could almost write a small novella to describe each one in detail, but I’m sure you’d rather listen to experience them. So in that case I will just pick up on a few of them to give a bit of a taste of what’s in store.
First of Jonny’s picks is ‘Pakaipa’ from Dividing The Element, who claim to be Zimbabwe’s answer to Soulfly. While that’s a pretty close description, I would go slightly further and say that they are more like a cross between Skindred and Korn. It’s pretty heavy, yet melodic, with a very prominent bass line which gives me those Korn vibes. Yet the vocals are very similar to Benji Webbe in the way that they switch from rasta-style rapping through to clean and melodic with a brief stop at aggressive shouting in between. Drawing cultural elements from their native Zimbabwe, including lyrics in the Shona language, this all combines together to form a seriously impressive track that builds up to a pretty intense ending. It’s definitely placed Dividing the Union onto my list of bands to keep track of.
Seeing as I’ve already mentioned Skindred, it would be rude not to mention this next band, Ill System, who are self-proclaimed “Reggae-Metal”. This could potentially be a strange concept to those outside the UK, but I doubt there are many reading this who don’t have an immediate idea of what that’s going to sound like. ‘Ego Check’ falls right into that formula that I’m familiar with – verses with a slightly heavy yet distinctly reggae feel and clean vocals leading into heavier choruses with a mix of clean and harsh vocals. If any of this sounds like your thing, then I’d definitely recommend keeping an eye out for Ill System.
Moving to a completely different area of the spectrum we have Cape Town’s own Monstroid who deliver some pretty great stoner rock. their track ‘Shadow Beast’ starts off with an instrumental introduction that sounds almost like it’s been pulled from a Rage Against the Machine song, but the similarity ends there. The rest of the song is pure fuzzy and groovy riffs with a whole butt-load of tht sweet ‘70s style. This is definitely a song to blast out while chugging down the beers with your mates on a camping trip (mates and camping trip optional).
There’s plenty more to discover on this album, with some noteworthy shout outs going to the wickedly brutal Vulvodynia and their death metal smash ‘Anthropophagus’ and the more melodic Vielikan with ‘God(s), Love and Life’ which has some strong modern Gojira vibes to it. But in all seriousness, you should grab yourself a copy of ‘Fangs Vol. 2’ and broaden your horizons. Who knows, you might just find your new favourite band hidden within these 14 tracks. And if you don’t, you’ll have at least done your bit to support a metal scene that is clearly gaining some serious momentum to be able to throw out bands of this quality! Fuck it, while you’re there you might as well dig out the first volume of ‘Fangs’ for double the amount of exciting African metal. I know I will be.
- ‘Fangs Volume 2’ is released on 25 September. You can get your copy HERE.
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