Iraqi dudes claim freedom to headbang

OneWorld UK

By Daniel Nelson

All the boys in the band want is to play. Unfortunately, they are Iraqis, so it has proved impossible.

They managed a gig in Saddam Hussein’s time. A government agent said they could perform but asked what they would be doing for the great leader. Their response was a special song: a frenzied heavy metal storm of sound drowning out ludicrous words about Saddam’s wonderful regime. It was a Monty Python sketch or an Onion report come to life.

For a few months after the US-led invasion, it looked as though Accrassicauda (from the Latin for "black scorpion") would blossom, if that’s not too delicate a metaphor for the raucous wall of sound the group generates. But the violence in Baghdad escalated and when life became too dangerous they joined the other 1.3 million Iraqis seeking refuge in Syria.

(Pause for thought here, to mull a point this documentary, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, does not labour – the peacefulness of life in Damascus compared to the hell that is liberated Baghdad.) The two capitals do, however, share a common feature: neither are a natural home for heavy metal. So the boys (there are no women at all in this film) moved on again, with the help of the UN refugee agency.

They may be the world’s first heavy metal refugees.

The film follows a pair of Vice magazine journalists, Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi, as they try to find out what has happened to band members Firas Al Lateef, Faisal Talal, Marwan Reyad, Tony Aziz between their rare performances.

What’s happened is that they have got out of practice and are struggling to hold their lives together. Their rehearsal room is destroyed by a rocket, the hotel where they play one of their gigs is blown up and at one point they are so broke they are forced to sell their instruments. Through it all they retain tbeir obsession, to perform and record. It’s not much to ask, but it’s too much. The level of intolerance and misunderstanding they face is encapsulated in the allegation that the way they jerk their heads backwards and forwards to the music is akin to Jews rocking backwards and forwards as they recite prayers and that therefore Accrassicauda must be a Jewish front.

Although the focus of the film is extraordinarily narrow, it powerfully conveys the dangerous madness of post-invasion Baghdad and gives glimpses into the lives of Iraqi refugees in Syria. It breaks down stereotypes and indirectly gives the abstraction of “freedom” a practical test: the right to wear your hair long and make a head-juddering noise.

* Heavy Metal in Baghdad will be screened at the ICA, The Mall, London SW1 on 12-24, 29-30 September.