Music I Like: Indigenous Metal

Long ago, I wrote a post on Indigenous artists I like, and mysteriously, none of them were heavy metal. That’s just plain weird. There were hardly any Native students at my high school, but lots of them at the heavy metal concerts I went to as a teenager in Arizona. So metal is the musical style I most closely associate with Native Americans. And there are a lot of really great Indigenous metal bands here in the U.S. and around the world. Here are a few that I like.

Actually, I have to start with a caveat. There are a lot more metal bands that focus on Indigenous themes and imagery than there are actual Indigenous artists making metal. I don’t want to add insult to the injury done by colonizers to Indigenous people by including any fake Indians in my list. But I’m not qualified to define who counts as authentic. Also, a lot of metal is produced anonymously. But to the extent possible, I have tried to only include artists that claim an Indigenous identity.

Cemican

Meaning “the duality of life and death” in Nahuatl, Cemican combine metal showmanship and shredding with pre-Hispanic musical instruments, imagery, and language. Nothing on In Ohtli Teoyohtica In Miquiztli feels gratuitous or gimmicky. All the elements are just thrown into the musical mix in the same inextricable way that ethnicity works in personal identities.

When I started writing this post, I thought I’d find lots of new albums from Indigenous metal bands, but they’re deeper underground than I realized. Cemican makes the wait worthwhile.

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Ifernach

On The Green Enchanted Forest of the Druid Wizard, one-man black metal act Ifernach, who claims a metis identity with Micmac and Irish ancestry, tells a story of a Native American hero who escapes European raids and survives in the forest with the help of – yeah, actually, I can’t follow the summary at all. But it contains a mash up of Native and Irish mythology with Indigenous shapechangers and Druids and if you’ve read The Orenda, you know that black metal is the right genre for stories involving the colonization of North America.

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Pan-Amerikan Native Front

On Little Turtle’s War, this one-man black metal project from south of the border explores the late 1700s confederation of Indigenous tribes that fought against colonial expansion into their lands. Pan-Amerikan Native Front is a little too Mayhem to suit my taste exactly, but folks who are deeper into black metal than I am all laud it’s quality. Black metal vocals are unintelligible anyway, but I appreciate that he’s used Indigenous language in the lyrics, with the final song entirely in Myaamia (a language I’ve never even heard of before).

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Alien Weaponry

Three piece Alien Weaponry hail from New Zealand. Their music is thrash without sounding too retro, and often sung in Te Reo Maori (although I like their songs in English, too). Unlike the party songs of thrash bands I listened to back in the day, on Tu these guys are writing about colonization, racism, and Maori history. I hardly ever listen to thrash anymore, but if there were more bands like Alien Weaponry, I probably would.

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Aztlan

There are several bands called Aztlan on Bandcamp, but the one I listened to mixes Mexican folklore and instrumentation; Nahuatl language; and death and thrash metal. On Legion Mexica the result is engaging and compelling and bears a very slight resemblance to Rodrigo y Gabriela. Mixing traditional instruments into a rock band is hard and often ends up feeling gimmicky, but this music needs all these elements to work. I couldn’t verify the ethnicity of (or anything else about) the band members, but the use of Indigenous language and precolonial instrumentation, and the complexity of even asking the question in a country where the majority population is mestizo are enough for me to call Legion Mexica authentically native until evidence to the contrary emerges. Plus, this band is too good to pass up.

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Blackbraid

A solo black metal project from the Adirondacks, Blackbraid just released its first full album, Blackbraid I. I know nothing about the tribes of that region, but the artist, who goes by Sgah’gahsowáh, identifies as Native American in an interview. Like all the best black metal, his music is primarily inspired by nature, although historical themes do crop up. At least that’s what he says – it’s not like I can make out the lyrics. (Although I do love the switch to death growls on the final track.)

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Winterhawk

Winterhawk was more hard rock than metal, but they were active back when there wasn’t much difference between hard rock and metal. So I only discovered them when I was researching this post. But they are exactly what I’m talking about.