Tuesday
Apr212009
Heavy Metal Umm Kulthoum
Issandr El AmraniVia AvantCaire via Fustat.
Pretty impressive heavy metal rendition of the classic Umm Kulthoum song "Enta Omri" considering this is an amateur recording of a live gig. The studio version could be quite polished, and the song lends itself quite well to melodic metal. They would have to shorten considerable to the ultimate original version, which lasts about an hour (but it's an hour extraordinarily well-spent.)
Umm Kulthoum's Enta Omri [61.2MB]
Reader Comments (6)
Fabulous! Thanks for posting. You've inspired me to mull over trying my hand at a blues version ... hmmm ...
Non-live version here: http://www.myspace.com/khalasband" target="_blank">http://www.myspace.com/khalasband
Actually I like it better on youtube.
Pardon my ignorance; is this an Egyptian band? Is it "Khalas"? Any albums out there one can obtain?
I always criticised modern Arab music as being inauthentic, pre-packaged an frankly as being a cheap imitation of what we perceive as being "Western" music or culture.
With all the new symphony orchestras being created in the Gulf, not one initiative has risen to the occasion of reinventing or developing Arabic music theory. Creating an Arab version of cultural modernity. All we do is imitate.
However, these guys seem to have found a middle ground, and a pretty impressive one at that.
Pardon the voicing off. Just tired of that pseudo-house, synthie sound I keep hearing on Arab radio and TV.
Yes, the band is called Khalas. I think so far they've only done live performances (there are a bunch of Cairo-area metal bands, they've even had a festival. Most aren't great, esp. since there are not too many venues for them.) The heavy metal scene has been dampened for the last decade after the 1997 AUC Satanists case - you guessed it, young guys got sent to prison because of their Satanic Iron Maiden T-shirts. Welcome to secular Egypt!
P.S. I should be clear that Khalas is a Palestinian group from Acre, not Egypt.
they've totally massacred it.