Caught In A Mosh ... Forever

A giant panda from hell plays speed metal guitar and laments mankind's extermination of other animal species. If you think that's bizarre, wait till you find out that he (she?) is called Death Panda.

I'm not making this up.



The guitarist is Marty Friedman, formerly of Megadeth. The vocalists are from Akihabara48, an all-girl Japanese group.

This could only happen in Japan.

At this point you're probably wondering why I know this. It's because I recently watched the loudest movie ever. Sam Dunn is an anthropologist and a heavymetal fan. He did what any such person would do - he made a documentary called "Global Metal" about heaymetal music around the world. And watching it made me feel like a teenager again. It took me back to when I was 14 years old and there was a new boy in school. He had just moved to Delhi from Cyprus, and he passed around a tape with music like I had never heard before. It was loud and it was rude and it could only be listened to at maximum volume.

Soon afterwards I heard of a band called Metallica, and how they had titled their first album "Kill 'Em All" in a nose-thumbing reference to record company executives who blocked the original title: "Metal Up Your Ass". Then, in quick succession, I discovered Iron Maiden, Slayer, Anthrax and a host of other bands with evil names, twin guitars, double-bass drums, and buckets of attitude.

My parents (and probably my neighbours) waited for me to grow out of it. But the thing is, once you're into metal, I don't think you can ever get out. As one of Dunn's interviewees in another documentary put it, "Metal fans love it forever. Noone goes 'Yeah I was really big into Slayer ... one summer.'"

The popular stereotype is that metal fans are long-haired drug-toking satan-worshipping anarchists who are incapable of fitting into civilized society. And while that is completely true, it totally misses the point. Which is that they are hearing-impaired long-haired ... anarchists.

Sometimes that stereotype can get quite hilarious. Years ago, when music was still sold on vinyl records, Iron Maiden went on tour in America. They inadvisedly scheduled a concert somewhere in the bible belt. A local preacher decided to crusade against their diabolical influence by organizing a bonfire to burn their albums. His devout followers duly bought a lot of records (somehow believing that this would be a bad thing for the band) and chucked them in the flames. All seemed to be well until someone realized that the plastic would release vapours. Evil, Satan-worshipping vapours. Panic struck and the crowd disappeared hastily to escape the fumes from Hell. Days later when the band arrived in town to perforate some eardrums, the only people who showed up to scream and point at them were their fans.

Coming back to Global Metal, I was blown away by some of the vignettes. There was the fan from Iran who somehow managed to keep up with his favourite music while living in a country where music CDs are illegal. There was the guy in Dubai who wore a traditional dishdasha like the ones in the picture below while being interviewed.


With a sheepish grin he reminisced about playing in his school band. and doing a cover of Jimi Hendrix's classic Purple Haze. He had worn just such a dishdasha on stage - except that it was all black.

There was the rather pudgy and incongruously named Sahil "Demonstealer"Makhija, lead singer in a band in Bombay. And the absolutely hilariously named band Bhayanak Maut. That's comic-book Hindi for "grisly death"; the humour in the name is sadly untranslatable.

There was a guy from Israeli band Salem recalling the time they sang about the holocaust. That sparked a debate in the national parliament about whether it was appropriate for a metal band to sing about such a serious topic. There was Max Cavalera from Brazilian pioneers Sepultura describing their first time in Jakarta. The fans, mostly students, got excited and rushed the stage to get closer to their idols. The police were already on edge because of political activism in Indonesia's universities so they panicked. They beat the kids down with batons. Then they forced 20,000 kids to sit down on the ground and watch a show by one of the loudest, fastest, most energetic bands ever.

And the absolute best part of the movie for me was X-Japan. In the late 1980s they started creating what would eventually be known as Visual Kei, a sub-culture that fused their musical style with extravagant make-up and fashion.


Don't be fooled by the posing and pouting. These guy kick ass and they kick it very very hard. They make the American glam metal bands of the 1990s look like a bunch of wusses; check out their videos on Youtube and you'll know what I mean.

So there you have it - giant Japanese pandas, Indian "demonstealer"s, and kosher headbangers, the world of heavymetal has it all. Is it any wonder we don't feel the need for civilized society?