African heavy metal refers to the heavy metal music scene in Africa, particularly in East African countries such as Kenya and Uganda, and Southern African countries including Namibia, Madagascar, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. It also extends into North African nations such as Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, although bands in the North African region associate themselves more closely with the MENA region in terms of cultural and social consistencies. African heavy metal is characterized by the use of European and American metal genres, usually blended with traditional African instruments and musical styles, creating distinct regional differences.
History
Southern Africa
Author Edward Banchs traveled extensively through the African countries with the most prominent metal scenes and published a book covering the musicians and the rise and struggles of the respective scenes in the Sub-Saharan and island countries. According to Banchs, South Africa has developed an intensely robust metal scene due to the existing music industry and the large population that could support the growing metal scene. In South Africa, heavy metal was introduced in the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s in Johannesburg and was met with support with the relative success of bands such as Odyssey, Ragnärok, Urban Assault, and Voice of Destruction. The arrival of metal music in the country was controversial. For example, the government and the N.G Kerk banned certain records from being imported, and fans of the genre faced hostility from the public with accusations of satanism. With the rise of the dance music around the turn of the century, the genre experienced a relative decline until its resurgence in the mid-2000s. In 2010, some South African music groups such as Red Helen, Facing The Gallows and Betray The Emissary followed a more international standard and approach to music. In South Africa, the fan base and band members are predominantly made up of white South Africans unlike in other African countries, such as Botswana, where the fan base is predominately from the black majority. The first black metal band in South Africa with all black members, Demogorath Satanum, was formed in 2009 and works to change the perception of metal music as a genre for white people and bring more black fans into the South African metal scene.
The Botswana heavy metal scene started in the 1970s with the introduction of classic rock and evolved into a distinctive sub-culture with a cowboy inspired aesthetic. Wrust, Overthrust, and Skinflint have achieved some international success and recognition. The 2014 documentary March of the Gods: Botswana Metalheads documents the heavy metal scene in Botswana.
Other Southern African countries such as Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Madagascar are developing metal scenes as well. The Mozambique metal scene is the subject of the documentary, Terra Pesada. Namibia held a metal festival in Windhoek intermittently between 2007 and 2014 called the Windhoek Metal Fest. Zimbabwe held its first documented metal concert in Harare in 2015 and the first album recorded in Shona was released in 2018. The Angola metal scene was documented and featured in the film Death Metal Angola.
Madagascar also has a growing metal scene recorded by Edward Banchs. As early as 1983, a band named Kadradraka 2000 was formed on the island and started playing heavy metal. This group was followed by bands like Martu Gass, Kazar, Lokomotiva, Vy Mafonja, Men out ( around 1986). Pharaons, Hemirah, Destruktor (1988-1989) were mostly thrash and black metal. In 1989 Pharaons possibly was the first African extreme metal issued on an LP album "Evil World".