Occasionally I’ll trip over something unique in my erratic stumbling around the web. Tonight, I found myself listening to some sound samples of a band I hadn’t, for some reason, come across before.
There is a genre called “Oriental Metal” — I prefer to think of it as a subgenre of Folk Metal — which uses eastern and middle-eastern influences alongside distorted western guitars. The trouble I have with this, as with much modern metal, is that even if the 30 seconds of preview is excellent, there’s a decent chance that somewhere a little further on there’ll be a lead vocalist screaming/growling/coughing up a lung. This, frankly, ruins it for me most of the time. But not this time.
Featured Artist: Khepri
This time, I checked YouTube to hear a whole track. Lo and behold, there are no vocals! This is a blessing — vocalists in metal are risky. A rare few have real talent and musical ability; the others, I find, detract from the music I’d rather be listening to. So when an artist or band, through choice or simply lack of a better option, chooses to put out an instrumental metal album, I’m usually glad to snap it up. These albums put their instrumentation front and center, and more often than not when a band is willing to do this, it means that they feel their music is strong enough to stand up without vocals.
This is certainly true of Khepri. Okay, the production value may not be as high as some of the major bands out there, but it’s clear the artist knows what he’s doing when it comes to the guitar — not to mention the doumbek. I can’t find any info on who exactly is playing, so I assume this is a one-man-band type of project.
I have a fair number of friends/acquaintances who bellydance either professionally or recreationally. Here’s hoping one of them latches on to this artist and blows some minds at the next party. It’s certainly going to be different from the usual Beats Antique or Azam Ali accompaniments, and while I love both of those, I definitely feel some shaking up is in order.
Check out Khepri’s website for more info
Buy digital versions of Khepri’s albums on Amazon MP3 (but be careful, the search algorithm has dropped some red herrings in the playlist) or Emusic.
Buy Khepri’s CDs on CD Baby