On Heavy Metal prescriptions and Scotoma’s Killing the Machine.
A long time ago I befriended this dude from college. He moved in Nicosia from Limassol. One day he opened his front door and watched me dragging a brown mattress. He told me “Put that in there,” pointing to the spare room. I ended up living with him for the rest of the “academic” year.
What connected us was our sheer appreciation to the rebellious rawness of Heavy Metal. We loved that music. We inhaled it, we exhaled it. We breathed it. It helped, you know. It gave us a place fit. Sure, we felt like Misfits but that was our badge of honor. Our Fuck You World. We are who we are, that sort of crap. Ha! It wasn’t really like that. We cared too much. Whom to listen, what is Metal and what is not. Who are they to tell us what is what? We know what is what. We had this prescriptive notion of what Heavy Metal was and when something didn’t fit, well, “it was crap”. What I couldn’t see back then, was that our blind treatment to the music was identical to what we received from the world: blind dismissive criticism. We were giving it back, twice as hard, and we had the audacity to complain. Ha!... Then again we were eighteen… in Cyprus .
So along those lines and along those days, a friend of my roommate (who later came to be a regular in our company) said to me one day:
“Hey, you look like Michlis, hahaha.”
“No he doesn’t,” said my roommate.
“Michli Michli Michli!”
“Hahaha.”
“Who is Michlis?” I asked, somewhat puzzled and drunk.
“He used to be the drummer of Scotoma,” said my roommate.
“A-ha”, I exclaimed. “And who are they?”
“A metal band from Limassol,” replied his friend. “Haha. Re Michli!”
That was the first time I ever heard of Scotoma. My roommate’s friend is their present drummer now, and as for the real Michlis, never met him, nor saw him.
Seven years later, via MySpace, a Sepultura concert and five pounds lent from Marios, I came face to face with Scotoma’s demo CD:
And I found their work overflowing with kickassery.
Great artwork of detailed yet chaotic design, matching their music’s unconventionality to norms, which paradoxically clings to them too.
The lyrics, showcase their opposition to our society’s shortsightedness, while simultaneously affirm their belief in humanity and the individual.Their music is fat and full, throbbing mercury at every beat. Thrashing sounds emitting from distorted and abused strings, vibrate your overjoyed eardrums. Growling voices of restrained pissedoffness. A rhythmic molestation of the drums and an exceptional ambient background made of keys.
Anger, despair, hope and then anger again. Scotoma’s Killing the Machine is an album of juxtapositions.Cypriot musicians, punching the establishment’s bunghole… and taking no prisoners.
Aggressive, heavy and true: Killing the Machine is for uninhibited, non-retard metallers. For people who can appreciate music, free expression and creativity.
Visit their website to find more on the band and how to acquire their demo.
p.s. Listen some of Scotoma's work here: www.myspace.com/scotoma
p.p.s. Killing the Machine features also a cool remix by Phat Finxxx, of the homonymous first track of the demo.