STRICTLY GLOBAL

This week's random wiki article landed on the 70's live-action saturday morning tv series The Secrets of Isis.  Awesome.  Never seen it, but it leads to Egypt, as Isis is an Egyptian Goddess, duh.  How random.  I was just conversing with my little sister via Facebook about the music scene over in Cairo, as that is where she lives.  Exact quotes: Me, "What's up with the music scene over there???" Her, "House...House...House...and errr.....House :-/."  But I just stumbled across the e-zine Rock Era, dedicated to underground music of Egypt and the Middle East, with genres spanning from new age to death metal.  Woo-woo!!!

Oh yes, Egyptian death metal.  Check out these guys from Cairo,  Crescent.  The name comes from the symbol which dominated the flag of Egypt for a while, but they put it more poetically on their myspace page: "Pertaining to our geographical roots were our sign Crescent conquered and prevailed for centuries." They put their first album out in 2000, and have a third coming out this year called The Retribution, which you can preview here.  For a death metal band, they sure have an uplifting goal... "Spreading justice, knowledge, freedom to mankind. Crescent is created to proclaim justice till our message reaches the whole world."  Party.

More Egyptian death metal! Scarab, formed back in 2006, will be releasing their first full length album this year, and you can hear tracks from it right now, here.  And again, the band's name is totally rooted in Egyptian history.  What's a scarab?  It's basically a beetle, but it's also believed by ancient Egyptians to be connected to Ra, the sun god.  In fact, during mummification, they would replace the heart of the deceased with a scarab to ensure rebirth in the afterlife.  Nice!  So yeah, Scarab has blown up in the pan-arabic metal scene, having won major battles, and opening for bands like Motorhead, Amon Amarth, Dimmu Borgir, and more! Here they are performing in Alexandria, Egypt...

So clearly, even though Euro-trash House is dominating Thursday night clubs in downtown Cairo, the underground scene of Egyptian rock is ready to take over.  Booyakasha.