Music

Heavy Metal in Baghdad on AUX Docs Tonight at 9pmET

by Allan Tong

Would you risk you life to play heavy metal?  That was the question that headbangers across Iraq faced under the former regime of dicator Saddam Hussein.  This documentary looks at an Iraqi heavy metal band, Acrassicauda, rocking in the post-Saddam era to the present day.  In a lot of ways, heavy metal is still frowned upon in this Muslim country, but for one brief moment right after Saddam was toppled in 2003 and just before Iraq descended into civil war, heavy metal could ring through the streets of Baghdad.  The civil insurgency from 2003-6 which saw car bombings almost every night across Iraq mirrors the turbulence gripping Acrassicauda who struggled to stay together — and alive.  “It’s risky, it’s stupid,” says the band, “but heavy metal rules.”  It isn’t the  loud riffs or screaming vocals, but the hopes of a generation that heavy metal symbolizes in a place that is often hopeless.