Metal Mastan [2024]
2 channel film
Once upon a history, the Soviet Cultural Center in Bangladesh went head to head in propaganda wars with the nearby United States Information Service, Alliance Francaise, and Goethe Institut. Thirty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the old building still has “Russian Cultural Center” on the facade; but strangled of funding by the Russian embassy, it now operates as the city’s most flexible rental venue, hosting flamenco classes, chess competitions, yoga classes, and Dhaka’s underground Heavy, Black, and Death Metal scene.
In May 2017, two death metal bands from Brazil, Krisiun and NervoChaos, were refused entry into Bangladesh at the airport. The bands’ Facebook pages reported that their passports were seized by Immigration Police and they were prevented from exiting the immigration lounge. Rumors circulated that during the airport interrogation, one band member had made statements that fell afoul of “blasphemy laws.” Only the Brazilian ambassadors intervention secured their release, but the concert was cancelled. Although not detained, the Swiss metal band Eluveitie’s concert was also cancelled over “security concerns.”
Six months after this concert cancellation, the microscopic metal scene continued to perform underground, bereft of foreign talent, local Bangla bands kept performing to ever smaller crowds. One day in spring 2017, NeckroHowl (the name is a hybrid of necromania and “Neckre”– Bangla for wold) was scheduled to give their farewell concert. The lead vocalist had received admission to an US university, metal dreams would be on hold for four years of Americana.
Thirty years earlier, director Naeem Mohaiemen had witnessed a similar moment rupturing Bangladesh’s even moro micro metal scene of the 1980s. The earliest metal bands– WarFaze and RockStrata both came out of a Jesuit missionary school, St Joseph, that
Mohaiemen also attended. In 1989 six of the band members left for the US at the same time. They had all been admitted into the same universities– Mankato and Wichita. How those remote campuses pulled them is unknown, but there was a dream in the air, that they would become metal gods in America. Thirty years later, band members still practice in basements, many have college age children, the flamboyant lead guitarist is now a software engineer for Apple.
Where will NeckroHowl be in thirty years? The song (never) remains the same.
KEY EXHIBITIONS
Tokyo, Japan
AWT Focus at Art Week Tokyo 2025, curated by Adam Szymczyk
Okura Museum of Art, November 2025