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[miko2]

Today's Song: Bir by Pentagram (Mezarkabul)

The biggest heavy metal band in Turkey is known as Pentagram. This is also the name of a well-known American thrash/doom metal band, so outside of Turkey Petagram uses the name Mezarkabul which I believe means "from the grave".

The band gained prominence in Turkey back in 1997 when they released the album Anatolia, which was not only a great leap forward for the band but also incorporated a lot of traditional Middle Eastern instruments and melodies. They quickly became a favorite of metal fans in Turkey who, up to that point, had pretty much only had foreign bands to listen to. In 2001 and 2002 they released two cds -- Unspoken, which is all in English and was released worldwide under the Mezarkabul name, and Bir, which contains songs in Turkish and was only released locally.

The title of the song Bir means "one". As someone on the Youtube page explains it:

"For any foreign friends, who are wondering about the lyrics; the song basically tells about not to have any fear in life because everything comes from one and only Creator. I think they made such a song to make the thick skulls in Türkiye understand that if the name is Pentagram or Mezarkabul it doesn't necessarily mean they are atheists."

Although this song is sung in Turkish, it's one of their most instantly likeable songs. Pentagram's brand of metal reminds me a lot of old-school metal bands such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and black album-era Metallica. This song in particular sounds like a Turkish Priest song. It's popularity in Turkey can be judged by the fact that I found more than half a dozen videos on Youtube of young guitarists showing off their chops by playing along with this song.

Pentagram is considered "oriental metal" because of their inclusion of some Middle Eastern melodies and folk instrumentation. It's more noticeable on their Anatolia cd I think. They share this label in common with some other Middle Eastern metal bands, most notably Isreali bands such as Orphaned Land, Melechesh, and Salem, and American uber-heavy death metal band Nile. Also considered "oriental metal" are uber-heavy death metal band Behemoth from Poland, and death metal band Rotting Christ from Greece. In fact, just like with folk metal, a lot of oriental metal is also death metal -- it's kind of refreshing that Pentagram is actually a "normal" metal band.

Although the album Unspoken is easy to come by on Amazon or iTunes, this particular album is almost impossible to find. However, you can download this song from their web site. I had a few problems doing so -- on some computers the download window opens partly off-screen, but on others I don't have that problem. I'm not exactly sure why that is. However, it's a cool metal song so it's well worth downloading. ^_^

Pentagram - Bir