PHEXATAAN - by
Terrorizer Magazine (England)
Interview by:
Dayal Patterson, March 7th, 2007
This is a short interview with Phexataan on
Terrorizer Magazine especially made for Terrorizer's Middle Eastern
Report Part II. The interview consists of 2 questions; one regarding
Phexataan's bands (Tyrant Throne, Augury and Phex) and the other
regarding the Metal scene in Jordan. A big part from Phexataan's
answers was featured on the Report. The interview was done in March
2007. Questions and Report by Dayal Patterson.
In your own words
please give us a brief summary of your bands, ie.
style, history, the band's aim, and any news on recent releases etc.
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TYRANT THRONE:
A Technical Brutal
Death Metal band, created in 2004 by my cousin Zaher Siryani and
myself. At first the band was called "Canopus" but the name later
changed into "Tyrant Throne".
Since we're living in a non-metal supporting society, the idea of
creating the band at the start was to do some brutally kick ass
music and get attention from the outside to be able to sign a record
deal or something. Work on the music for the band's first release
started since the beginning; sick, upset, twisted, technical and
brutal riffing, Hellish vocals and drumming is the spearhead of the
band's music. The main ideas in the band's lyrics are based on
ancient ones and mythology, philosophy, hate and rebellion against
the poisoned society; that gave the band a more spiritual anger
atmosphere.
Like most underground bands, the main
and most important aim of the band is to be heard. We seek mostly
for our music to spread and reach outside the borders of the Middle
East and the Arabian World; this is definitely very hard to achieve
without signing to a label, so basically we have a few labels in
mind which we'll try to contact soon. A big problem that we're
facing is that we still don't have a permanent drummer for the band,
simply because we can't find a drummer in our area with the level of
technicality that we seek, but all we can do is to keep searching
before contacting any labels.
Our most recent and only release yet is "Abominations EP" which got
released on the 14th of January 2007. This release brought a new
level to the local Metal scene and proved to be a milestone in the
history of Jordanian Metal. It is described as "One Fucking
Masterpiece" according to JorZine's review of the EP and got a 10/10
rating.
The EP was recorded at the Sirenwave Studio (which is owned by
Muhammad Masri), and was edited, mixed and produced by me at my
personal home studio "The Phexagon Studio".
Line-up:
Phexataan (Muhannad Bursheh) - Bass & Vocals
Zaher Siryani - Guitars
For live shows, to be able to
complete the line-up we use the help of some session members who
vary from gig to gig, but I must mention Sirenwave (Muhammad Masri)
who was always with us as a live guitarist until he left the
country.
Releases:
Abominations (EP 2007)
Official Website:
www.tyrantthrone.tk
Myspace Page:
www.myspace.com/tyrantthrone
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AUGURY:
Started in September 2000 by myself (Phexataan),
Saeed Abu-Jaber, Omar Nooreddin, Tareq Fayyad and Omar Ebdah. In the
first 2 years the bands passed through many style changes, basically
like any new band. In 2002 the Drummer Omar Ebdah left the band,
during that period working on original material had already started
and the band settled on some kind of Experimental Melodic Black
Metal sound which had also obvious Heavy Metal and Progressive Metal
touches. In 2003 my cousin Basil Bursheh joined the band as a
permanent keyboardist, to add an atmospheric touch to the band.
In early 2004, Augury's first
release; "Temptation of Oath" demo was released and gained a great
reputation in the Jordanian, Arabian and Middle Eastern scenes due
to the professionalism and quality of the music, and the band became
a significant and important factor in the area. Temptation of Oath
can be considered as the first professional Metal material and
production in Jordan (Recorded and produced at the Sirenwave
Studio), and it came at a time when the local scene was dead for
about 3 years because of trouble with the authorities, so basically
Augury gave a big electrical current to the scene and it started
rising again. The demo also reached a good number of countries other
than the Middle East and Arabia; Europe, the Americas...
The following year, the band stepped a further step when Temptation
of Oath was released in a split album with the Belgian Folk Black
Metal band "Natan". The split album was released by the Mexican
underground label "Atolinga Records" and it is now selling world
wide. By that Augury became the first ever Jordanian metal band to
release an official release with a foreign metal label.
Currently and unfortunately, the band is passing through a very hard
period. Since the guitarists Omar Nooreddin and Saeed Abu-Jaber
moved to England in 2004, the band has been moving slowly and only
did a few shows and composed little material in the past 3 years.
The biggest strike to the band was the immigration of the vocalist
Tareq Fayyad to the USA, which made things even worse. The current
situation of Augury is on hold until the near future decides what
will happen!
Line-up:
Tareq Fayyad - Vocals
Phexataan - Bass & Backing Vocals
Omar Nooreddin - Guitars
Saeed Abu-Jaber - Guitars
Basil Bursheh - Keyboards
Sirenwave - Session/Live Drums
Releases:
Temptation of Oath (Demo 2004)
Augury/Natan (Split 2005)
Official Website:
www.augury.tk
Myspace Page:
www.myspace.com/augurymusic
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PHEX:
My free one-man band. It started in 2001 as a side
project for Augury where I can put my 100% personal ideas.
There is no specific style for this
project, its definitely Extreme Metal, but I can't really categorize
it in any genre, each release has a different sound. The first ever
musical work as Phex was actually Electronic Music; "Experiments
00-01 (2001)" a demo tape which was never added to the Phex
discography until 2006 when I decided that it will make no harm to
add it. Second and third demos "The Black Vision (2002)" and
"Spirits and Devils (2003)" had some kind of Doom/Industrial/Death
mix! First full-length album "Transfixion (2005)" is musically close
to Death Metal, but its not really Death Metal, so I just call it
Extreme Metal with Ambient touches. Next album is intended to be
Black Metal.
To talk more about Transfixion album; 9 tracks out of 10 (such as
Spirits and Devils, Llama's Odyssey, The Insect War, Watching Your
Death, ...) are re-recorded versions of songs that appeared on
"Spirits and Devils" and "The Black Vision" Demos, and the 10th
track "Powder Burns" is a tribute song for the legendary Death
Metallers "Bolt Thrower". Like Tyrant Throne's "Abominations (EP
2007)" and Augury's "Temptation of Oath (Demo 2004)", Transfixion
brought a shock to the Arabian scene due to the musical material and
the professional sound production work. The Album was recorded,
mixed and produced at the Sirenwave Studio. Transfixion featured
some guests on some tracks; Sirenwave played 2 crazy solos on the
song "Watching Your Death" and Zaher Siryani Machine gun guitarist
of Tyrant Throne played another solo on the same track. Basil
Bursheh keyboardist of Augury played keyboards on the instrumental
track "Fires of Demise".
Although Phex is a one-man project, that doesn't mean that it is
only a studio project. Phex performed 2 live gigs in 2006, with the
help of session live members to complete the line-up of course.
Main aim is to sign with a reasonable record label for the time
being to be able to distribute my music safely, and hopefully things
will start happening in a bigger form in the future. One thing is
for sure, Phex will always be a one-man band, and will always remain
totally EXTREME.
Line-up:
Phexataan (Muhannad Bursheh) - Guitars/Bass/Vocals/Programming
Releases:
Experiments 00-01 (Demo 2001)
The Black Vision (Demo 2002)
Spirits and Devils (Demo 2003)
Transfixion (Album 2005)
Official Website: www.phex.tk
Myspace Page:
www.myspace.com/phexmusic
How is the metal scene where you are
and what difficulties have you had, for example with Laws, playing
live etc etc.
Sadly the Metal scene in
Jordan isn't really good, due to many problems. Starting from the
people themselves then going to authorities and laws. First of all
there are many Metalheads in Jordan, but at the same time there are
loads and loads of wannabes and posers. The majority of fans here do
not really appreciate the hard work of good bands, infact they only
support their friend's bands or what so ever. Many people do not
really look at real talent, they cheer for "showing off" talents!
There is a lot of envy and jealousy instead of support, I really
don't know why, so in a way you'll find successful and talented
bands hated, while sucky and showing off bands loved, yea that
happens a lot!!! I don't really know if all Metal scenes around the
world face such problems.
Going to one of the biggest problems; THERE ISN'T MUCH SUPPORT FOR
MUSICIAN'S AND BANDS. We have a very major lack in support; since
the beginnings of the Jordanian scene in the late 80's, a local
label was only created last year; MUTE RECORDS, which I guess the
name will change into "JORDAN RIVER" in the future because Mute
Records is already a name for an international label. Some people
tried to do websites and forums, but too bad they weren't
professional enough to do proper promotion for bands and stuff, so
they eventually where locked or what so ever. Only one website is
really doing a great Job "JorZine" (www.jorzine.com). Its a
relatively new webzine which was created in early 2006 as I can
recall, these guys are actually doing their best to improve the
scene and they're doing more and more stuff every year, most
importantly taking management of some big names in the scene like
Bilocate and Tyrant Throne.
Talking about problems with authorities and laws, that is actually a
very old thing in Jordan, and I guess its a problem in other
countries in the area as well. The biggest problem is that the
society here takes us as Satanists and Devil Worshippers instead of
recognizing us as musicians, so many people gets questioned by the
police from time to time about being related to Satanism and shit.
the biggest cases happened in 1997 and 2002, where many Metalheads
where thrown in prison, and we started reading silly articles in
news papers about Metal and Metal gigs, of course there were many
stupid media lies just to get the society to hate Metal, for
example: group sex in gigs, strange rituals meaning head banging and
stage diving,... hehe yeah stuff like that. A big gap happened
between 2002 and 2004 where the Metal scene was totally dead.
Strangely enough in 2005, it looks like the authorities understood
that its not really about being Satanic, so the rate of problems
with police dropped a lot.
Also one of the biggest problems is shortage of money for bands and
general financial state. Bands do not have money to record their
music, bands do not have money to print and release their music.
Concert organizers do not have a good financial balance to do large
gigs, or to get a descent sound system or stage at least.
There are no professional Metal recording studios or engineers to
produce pro quality sound. Although my bands Tyrant Throne, Augury,
and Phex all released CDs with professional sound production, but
that's all because of our extremely hard work and personal
experience and long years of experimenting in recording. First great
step was done by our friend Sirenwave who made a home studio and
started the "Good Recording Quality Revolution" in Jordan, but he
left last year to the USA, so am now continuing his job; I've built
a personal home studio "The Phexagon", and its going to be
officially opened soon for bands to record with very cheap prices as
a way to support.
There are a lot of
talent in Jordan, but it needs to be supported and am sure it will
kick out brightly, there are some hard working bands who deserve to
be recognized, such as Bilocate and others. Wish them all the luck!
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