Here, I will try to explain some short points about the scoffing in this biography.. 6 milliard people like us are living here on earth. All two-legged creatures like chicken, ostrich, kangaroo and human have a story from their life. What I here write can be the story of every Iranian musician.
Obtrusive man In fact, the obtrusive by destroying the appearance of things, changes every illusion to a bitter reality. (Desiderius Erasmus)
Biography... Pah! I don't know why this section should be here but one of my friends insisted on it... biography...pah...... what biography?
Once someone said that we are seeds, thrown on salt-marsh and instead of watering they pissed on us. But this does not matter anymore because the same person who said that pissed on the seeds instead of watering them. In this biography I will pay attention to this pissing.
There is a saying that goes: if a lamp is a necessity in your home, it is not a necessity in the ruined place we call a mosque. I have, though, witnessed the exact oppisite of this saying. By paying attention to the pissing in my life, you will be only become depressed and tired. For example, I was born in a religous family with old-fashioned ideas and rules that are not used today. Listen to this, they think a boy can listen to the music only if he is studying at a university (20 years old!). And the music must be legal, not metal music. They condemn metal people, and especially metal people who make fun of religion, because they are very religious and consider that people against their religion.
I don't want to talk about the medieval kind of school we have in Iran, and neither about our universities - more used for bribes and broking than transferring knowledge.
Society: refer to the family.
But the religious government is the biggest enemy of art, culture and knowledge. They are radically against culture, art, and visdom. Music is sinful. To sell, to buy, or even to make a musical instrument is a sin. Do you want me to go on?? Now, we all know what this is: to piss on art, culture, knowledge and on humanity.
I am going to try to explain how Rock music found me and my friends. Years ago me and one of my frineds recieved a piece of the album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd and this was truly the beginning. We were 15 or 16 years old in that time, and believed we had found something valuable. This was also the beginning of understanding music as the spirit of the world and the harmony in life. Music is an art that breaks chains and obligations. Music breaks the religious petrified wall, so that it cant be rebuilt. We went to find pure water instead of piss. Ok well, we went to understand music.
It took two more years before my friend saw the first guitar that was nailed to a wall. He was excited and came to tell me about the broken guitar, and how he was trying to buy it. He asked me if I could repair it, and I happily replied I wanted to do so. He revealed to me that the owner of the guitar used fishing thread instead of strings on the guitar and we thought they were very stupid. We found out years after that this kind guitar was a classic guitar, using strings made of nylon, and not steel as we though they had to be. (I think I was stupid, not the owners.)
I had my first guitar when I was 21 and it was an old toy guitar. When I came to buy it the salesperson took me to the basement of the store and showed me the guitar. I felt like it was a weapon or uranium I was buying. I paid him and took the guitar home. It was totally camouflaged, because I took the neck apart from the body and wrapped it in sheets. Having a guitar was very illegal in that time.
This was the beginning to play music, but took me one year only to tune the guitar. I searched for someone who could teach me how to play music and to find more ways to learn music. This search took approximately 6 or 7 years. I not only failed to find that person, but also lost a lot of time. For example a section of a songbook named "Metal Mania" came across my way. I had heard that there existed a special kind of writing, used for guitarplaying, but I did not know what it was called. I also knew it was very useful. My Metal Mania had this kind of writing. Now we now it is called a TAB. I asked one of the old musicians I knew about what it was. He shamelessly told me that it was notes for piano (!), just to mislead me. I was so stupid, I did not realize this until after a few years. But I have seen lots of this kind dirty rats in my life since.
Playing metal I was wondering why I dedicated my life to metal music. I could have done something else, maybe dedicated my life to philosophy or technology or science etc. But metal music felt very familiar to my life. War, police ruling government, dictatory, and cultural pressure are some of the familitarities. I could scream with metal music and that is how I fell in love with it. (I was very young at that time.) I wanted to show with metal music the shit that was my life and the food of my soul (the piss).
In summer of -95, I created my first song, working with a dear friend. It was an easy piece, imitating the song "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath (in Am). The song was named "Scissors" and shortly after, I also made "Do you know my name" and "Delirium 1". Delirium 1 was my first complete work, a real song. And then I made Delirium 2. I had before this started to build guitars and could now make a good guitar for my practice, but I was working with a dying band. My friends had other goals in music and did not share my idealism.
Mehr, Black Swastika, Destroy this disgrace To create a strong group was my dream. Strangely though, I seemed I could never gather all my friends together. For example: in one practice two people did not speak to each other, one did not show up and no one had practiced. To be able to work as a group (musical or any kind) there is a need to sacrifice and forget about self-conceit, to take responsibility and one in the group must be accepted as a leader. These were conditions none of us met. Our results were almost nothing. It was like we were used to piss, and after little time we split up.
During this time I got to know Mehr. He was energetic and ambitious. More importantly we shared the same vision in music and we started working together. This was the beginning of Black Swastika.
Black Swastika are two names from Metallica and Black Sabbath. These two groups were our rolemodels. Swastika is a symbol of power, the sun, energy and Mehr (Mithraism). Black sun means eclipse, blocking the sun. People think the sun is shining, but it has been dark and black for many years. (The old Iranian symbolism for light and life have been covered by a shit culture, so it can not shine to the people. They now turn to that culture, believing it to be the sun they need.)
For me, patriotism is beatiful, epic and poetical, and racism is rough, imprudent and unrealistic.
Illegal song (Destroy this disgrace) One day, an unreliable man came to us and gave us an offer to play legal music. We told him he would get his fucking answer in next week. Legal music is an illusionary art. Music limited by the religious government is shit. It is an anti-art music made only for deceiving people. Legal music is an anti-art to make the eclipse of the sun remain. No, no and no..... this was not acceptable to us. In every way they can, they block the ways to art and wisdom. Now that we had managed to overcome their obstacles, they wanted to use us. No, no and no.... we could not accept this. We are free men. Art is freedom. Nobody can make it legal or illegal.
The unreliable man came back after one week. We honoured him by playing a song to him. After we finished, he asked what kind of music it was. Illegal music, we said, and with this he knew what our answer was. The filthiest music for us was legal music.
Fable of creation This music is Mehrs creation. He was sick of silly stories about the first humans. He made this song about the creation in a comical way, mother Adam, father Eve, God, Satan and the Angels. In the lyrics to this song, he used pieces from Sadegh Hedayat and poetry from Hafez.
Knight of Fire songs The songs of Knight of Fire have two parts, text and music.
Texts The texts are speeches to the people, especially to the Iranian people. The duty of an artist is to speak to people without censor or elimination, and to be responsible about this duty. In doing this, he must learn how to express himself and always remember that the last word has not been said.
The music Our music is our anger. Our music is our erupted infection. Our music is our fight. When our music is disharmonic, it is in perfect harmony with our disharmonic life. (Psychologists can have a good time analyzing this music.)
To be continued...
Guest members on Rejected: Tomas Akvick on bass & vocals, Tommy Enström on drums. Guest members on Warrior's nightmare: Themgoroth on vocals, Stefan N. on drums.
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