If you're reading this, that means you have the ability to get online, and chances are, it wasn't all that difficult. You turned on your computer, or pulled your phone out of your pocket, clicked on that browser icon or fired up the app, and voila—instant and virtually unlimited access to anything and everything, from the news of North Korea's latest potentially world ending nuclear follies to fetish porn's deepest and darkest depths of forbidden pleasures. It's all here.
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But let's stick with music. Everything from vegan progressive hardcore to animist blackgaze is at your fingertips. Every day you can download, discover—and if you're a musician, pick and choose from—all those disparate sonic elements floating around in the online ether to come up with your own concoction of sounds and styles. And why can you do that?Because you don't live in Cuba.
Yes, Cubans can get online these days. This isn't news. But accessing the internet there is a royal pain in the ass that involves lining up for a scratch card (that grants you an hour of net time) and then accessing a painfully slow network in an outdoor wi-fi park. For Cuban metal musicians, and everybody else in Cuba for that matter, this is as good as the Information Age gets. If anyone wants to hear what's going on with heavy music past or present, it's either get in line and find what you can in an hour (if you can afford it), or hope that something even vaguely metallic makes its way on to the Paquete Semanal—the Weekly Package; an illegal home delivery service of a terabyte of the latest TV shows, information, and music from abroad on an external hard drive. Again, if you can afford it.That's why it's so impressive that metal exists at all in Cuba. The bands that founded the scene have histories dating back 30 years or more, to a time when playing rock music (let alone metal), was illegal, as was singing anything in English. The scene isn't huge (somewhere around a hundred bands in a country of about 11 million). And at present, there are no places for Havana bands playing originals to get on stage, unless the show is approved by the Cuban Rock Agency. There is a stage for cover bands playing softer standards at Club Turf in Vedado, not too far from the old punk and metal head stomping grounds of 23rd and G, but that's about it. Despite the fact that access to any decent recording studio is controlled by the government, Cuban metal bands keep finding ways to pump out new music. There's even a dedicated metal festival, Brutal Fest, organized by French expatriate David Chapet.
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Times are changing in Cuba. Restorations and new developments are underway. Once Raúl Castro shuffles loose the mortal coil, who knows what the next era will bring. But until then, playing music of any kind is still a real struggle in Cuba, but not a spiritual or existential struggle, nor a metaphorical one. It's a financial, logistical, and political struggle, during which people have been beaten, imprisoned, or worse. Think of them the next time you feel like whining about how hard it is to be in a band. Until then, here are some bands bringing the heavy in la República de Cuba.As the godfathers of the Cuban metal scene, with a name as recognizable to the average Cuban as the Buena Vista Social Club, Zeus play a mix of groove metal and thrash. Their music courageously assesses the everyday struggles of the Cuban people under the revolutionary regime as well as other issues like drug abuse, all in in a country wherein speaking your mind on social issues has been, in times past, enough to warrant a prison sentence.Megadeth, Metallica, Fear Factory—these are the bands lead guitarist Hansel Arrocha lists as main influences when I have a chance to talk to him at a gathering of local musicians, artists, and filmmakers in a Havana apartment overlooking the old city to the west, the Malecón seawall and esplanade to the north in early August. Hansel mentions the difficulty of finding engineers who know how to properly record metal in Cuba. In nearly 30 years, owing to the prohibitive cost of recording and the difficulty of getting studio time for anything remotely controversial when everyone from the man on the mixing desk to the person micing up the drums is on the government payroll, the band has only managed a pair of full-length releases, and they're not entirely happy with the sound on either of them. But even three decades on, they're still going for it. They've toured abroad to Spain and Russia, and Hansel's gone to the U.S. with his other bands that play a more commercial and therefore profitable style (a much-needed source of income from abroad when playing Cuban jazz or rumba standards at a Havana bar might net a player $5 for a night's work). But unlike many other Cuban musicians who have defected during their trips overseas, the members of Zeus have chosen to remain in their homeland, for better or for worse.
Zeus
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Agonizer
Combat Noise
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Unlight Domain
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From the Graves
Mephisto
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In Cuba, musicians train for years at the nation's musical academies, starting as children at places like the Amadeo Roladán Conservatory. They might learn standards for a decade or more before finally getting the chance to explore their own musical whims. And even then, they may not be fortunate enough, connected enough, or wealthy enough to be able to finance their own recording. Then comes the added weight of the near impossibility of becoming known outside of Cuba. Still, in the face of all this, bands like Mephisto persevere.It was in a Havana tattoo shop called La Marca that I was informed that the current capital of Cuban metal isn't Havana, but "Ciudad Metal," Santa Clara. As one of the artists so succinctly put it, "Havana is weak!"Personal opinions vis a vis regional scene strengths and weaknesses aside, if you were to make your case for Santa Clara being Cuba's "Metal City," you would definitely begin your opening arguments with Medium. How the band managed to channel the Scandinavian death metal sound in the early 90s (they even covered Nihilist on one demo) during the pre-internet, full embargo clime of Cuba's so-called Special Period, in the days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I'll never know. What I do know is that if you're into crudely recorded death metal demo tapes, this will be right up your alley (as will the now-defunct group's first and only full album, Blinder, released in 2001 on Mexico's American Line Productions).
Medium (Prev. Cronos)
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