Halla—Black Metal from Iran

In light of the current civil unrest in Iran, and also because Jed asked me if there were any Iranian metal bands, it's interesting to observe what small efforts (especially those blatantly opposing the religious state) have emerged from Iran's metal underground. By Encyclopaedia Metallum's count, there are at least 14 metal bands from Iran of assorted styles. Some of the artists play power metal, while others (not surprisingly) have latched on to the ever-growing suicidal/depressive black metal sound, though not necessarily with impressive or staggeringly original results.

But what could be more perfect in the current climate than a band calling itself Halla (Allah backwards!) playing raw, dirty, black metal/punk/noise in the tradition of Bone Awl and Ildjarn, with song titles like "Spit" and "Rend All Holy Books"? Halla, like so many black metal projects, is actually a one-man effort, listing the band's lyrical topics as "Anti-Islam, Anti-Religion." Think for a moment how ballsy that is—it's not like here, where our new President actually mentioned "non-believers" in his inaugural speech. One cardboard kiosk of tapes for sale on the corner, and this guy likely disappears forever, or at least gets exiled.

The download below bundles together Halla's Evil single and the Horizons split album (with the moderately interesting French band Aurvandil.)

>>>download Halla

Also impressive are the Tehrani project Sorg Innkallelse, who play a more "traditional" black metal than Halla, with rat-a-tat drum-machine blast beats, and some excellent songs going for them, like this one:

>>>Sorg Innkallelse - "Murderers Come Around"

If you like that, you can download the entire album here.

Link from Into the Woods.