2018 began with one of the biggest achievements in the history of the scene, which was Odious’ participation in Septicflesh/Inquisition EU tour! It was the first Egyptian band to participate in a massive, 23 show tour with such wide known bands as Septicflesh.

We still with Odious’ activity, Another massive achievement in our scene was to see two of the best and most popular Metal bands in Egypt share the stage together. Witnessing Odious and Scarab on one stage is phenomenal! Especially for those who didn’t witness the good old days back in late 90’s and early 2000’s. It was on the occasion of Scarab’s celebration for their upcoming album “Martyrs of the Storm” and launching a slogan will be Egypt 2019 Metal Slogan “The Storm is Approaching”.

Another great achievement witnessed in the Egyptian Metal Scene was the honorable activity of Crescent. No doubts, 2018 was a happy but also busy year for Crescent; the band released one of the best Egyptian Metal albums in the year “The Order of Amenti”. In addition, Crescent participated in a number of shows in Germany, France, and Ukraine.

Last year also had a wide impressive activity for Medic. Those Egyptian Progressive Metal veterans gave the whole Middle East a gem called “Ascension”. A wonderful story framed in the unique enjoyable Progressive music.

Ahl Sina didn’t want to let 2018 go without their presence, so the band released 3 wonderful, dynamic singles from their epic not yet released masterpiece “Troops of Pain”.

Massive Scar Era also weren’t far Away from Egypt and the Middle East in 2018, as they released a widely successful EP called “Color Blind”, which featured two music videos, “Unfollow” and “Color Blind.” In addition, they had cross Canadian tour for 18 days – check tour details here.

Also, the scene witnessed new singles by many popular bands as Al Azif and Mephostophilis. In addition, we had single releases for impressive rising bands as Riverwood, Thorvald, Chains of Destiny, and Catharsis.

We can’t deny Segadoras’ return to action, also Meddox Theory released a very good full length album.

Egyptian Depressive Black Metal band Frostagrath released an outstanding single “Under Your Black Wing” featured Sayed Ragai and Devour released a new single called “Freak”

The Greek band Dimlight rocked the stage of the lands of pyramids and Nile, alongside French Heavy Metal legends Nightmare at this last MB Fest night.
But, because the world is not always beautiful, the scene had major problems. First, the tragedy of the final Metal Blast Festival. It was one of the greatest shocks that conquered our scene as it was the only active event for Metal Concerts.

Another shameful trace in our scene, was some childish actions by some bands and fans who didn’t respect the voting system posted by Metal Blast Festival for choosing a band for the opening slot at the final MB Fest.

That was a short reminder for the main events of our Metal Scene in 2018.
Hope things turn be better in the upcoming years.

Edited by: Amged Abdel Moghny.

Have you missed our previous rewinds? Get to know more about what happened in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

At El Sawy Culturewheel, a cultural center well-known for its constant support for Metal and Rock music talents altogether, and specifically in the River Hall was held Metal Blast, one of Egypt’s finest festivals in its third anniversary showcasing yet another diverting lineup and delightful medium. Rock Era Magazine team was among the crowds to bring you the experience as it happened:

Prior to the concert, Metal Blast offered four different workshops on vocalling by Zander Adam and Sayed Ragai, music composing by Ehab Fawzi, drums by Jacek Gut and guitar by Hubert Więcek. Aimed at educating beginners about the process of music making, these workshops drew a lot of attention and participation from people of different backgrounds who were very keen about learning new techniques as well as sharing expertise.

Concert started around seven-ish as Devour started their show. The four-piece Alternative Metal outfit abruptly came out stronger than before with music that sounded to have “matured” since their first appearance in The Breakdown: The Introduction event at Rawabet last year. Ragi Akram’s vocalling was a bit weak at first, yet seemed to improve as they went through their setlist of 6 tracks. The attention, however, was overly fixated at Omar Assem’s superb performance on bass and brutal vocals- also, Omar Damien on Rhythm guitar who skillfully mastered Ablaze solo. The band played songs, like: Patronize, Worthless, Little Scars, Freak, Ablaze and Reflections.

Led by Mohamed Emam who had taken on vocalling duty only earlier this year, the Heavy Metal group Divine followed onstage at utmost energy propped by profuse smoke and intense light effects. Not only did a success like such lie upon covering old school bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath – as well as the originals – it depended on Divine‘s distinguished fashion in keeping the atmosphere as energic as possible that was sure to overwhelm the audience and prompt them to interact. They played songs, like: Heavy and Hell (Black Sabbath cover), Skinned Alive, Powerslave (Iron Maiden cover), Kings and Queens and Burn in Hell (Judas Priest cover)

Medic fans began to gather around in anticipation for one of Egypt’s Progressive standouts in the heavy music field to-date going about its business. The hall was
thoroughly crowded by the time frontman Ehab Fawzi was chanting his famous lines “Rise Above, and Crave Your Way Back to the Surface”. Medic‘s latest arrival Karim Wassim shone on keyboards throughout the whole show.

On a side note, during the second song, Ehab called out for a mosh-pit which was, in a matter of seconds, put down by Metal Blast crew. Individuals involved were escorted out of venue as El Sawy Culturewheel is very clear about its policy against violent behaviors of any kind. Medic played songs, like: Of a Blessed Memory, The Downfall and Rise Above.

It goes saying how Destiny in Chains seem to never run out of surprises on each and
every live occasion; always seeking innovation as approach of avoiding repetition and falling into boredom. This once the five-member Metalcore/Deathcore outfit of eight years surprised the audience with a new song that was written only ten minutes before their coming out on stage. That song, titled I Am The Ruins, featured quite a reputable musician and event-organizer Sayed Ragai of Sinprophesy who does not miss a chance of providing support for his fellow musicians. Destiny in Chains‘ sounds had only recently become Deathcore-biased with a notable improvement in Ahmed Alaa’s performance on drums and Mostafa Khaled newly joining in as bassist, by which the fans were left in curiosity over who exactly wrote the music; the answer like it always had been “Destiny in Chains write all the music”. DIC played songs like: Instrumental, D.S.M., I Am the Ruins, Shut Up and Standing All Alone

And for the second year in a row, Polish Metallers graced the River Hall stage with their presence within a rather friendly, bustling atmosphere. The Death Metal group Banisher hailing from Cracow hauled on board giving a topmost heartfelt performance. There was technicality to it aroused mainly from Tytus Kalicki’s extreme vocalling style alterations and Hubert Więcek’s melodic tunes on guitars. By the end of show Banisher made sure to not leave without sharing a couple of laughs with the audience and finally wrapped it up by playing the Circus theme song in Metal. Banisher played songs, like: Scarcity, Black Blood, Dystopia, Paradigm Shift, Exceptionacism, Benny Hill, Chekov’s Gun, Brutal Vasectomy and War on Drugs.

All photography reserved to: Lina ElGohary

Ahmed, can you tell more about how it all started?

I started playing drums at the age of 16 and my first experience was with Metal music, with all its variations like Rock, Black and death metal.

On the other hand my cousin Tamer Tawfik was a big reason for me to be a musician, he is an opera singer and he has always pushed me to listen to different kind of music like (Opera , Jazz, Latin, Tango and even Rock music.)

I’ve been in love with music ever since I was a kid and my mom was the first one who noticed that I’ll be a drummer because I’d stroke anything with spoons and forks haha, I don’t remember that exactly but she told me the whole story about it later. Finally I got my first drum kit when I was 16 years old, I started playing to all the songs that I know, like Hey You by Pink Floyd, Fade to black and Master of Puppets by Metallica and finally Trust and Symphony of destruction by Megadeath, then my cousin Tamer told me that he got an album for a drummer called Dave Weckl, I listened to him and I was shocked because he had a lot of variations in the same song and he is so creative with his grooves, from that moment on I decided to take drum lessons, to be able to play like him. My cousin recommended Mr. Muhammed Saa’d for me, he is the drummer of the Cairo opera house orchestra. I went to Muhammed and started my first drum lesson, but after 2 lessons Muhammed told me that we wouldn’t be able to keep going because he is very busy with his masters and studies, so I decided to keep going on my own with books & CDs.

4 years later, I went to Mr. Amr Yousef and he changed me completely. I started listening to Latin, Jazz and Fusion. I took 7 lesson with him. I don’t know why I used to take few sessions with every teacher. After this I went on my own way with more books, DVDs and CDs till this moment. One day, I went to watch Amr Yousef’s performance with Sahra, and I was attracted to the band’s trend with all its energy and variety in rhythms and styles, but due to some issues between Amr & Sahra, he left the band and he recommended me to them and of course I was very happy with this step because it would make me take out all my energy and ideas for the drumming. Now I am still with Sahra.

Why did you choose to play the drums?

First, it’s a gift from Allah. Second, I loved the beats and the rhythms more than anything because they gave me power more than any other instrument, but for sure I can’t deny that I am in love with the Guitar, Sax and Piano. Third, it looks so sexy on stage, haha, I am really in love with the view.

Ahmed, what genres of music do you play? and why did you choose these genres?

I have no specific kind of music but the kind I like playing most is Fusion because it lets me play different kind of beats and music at the same time, and I hate to be limited to one genre, because I like to play different variations in my music and in my drumming style. So let’s say world music, but sometimes when I’m home I like to play some death and thrash metal stuff for some bands like Lamb of God, Necrophagist, Decapitated, In Flames, Testament and Pantera. I know that I am crazy, but I really love this music.

What troubles did you face at the start? How did you face them?

Hm, my real troubles were all about drums, not my parents or my friends at all. Let’s begin with the sound: I wanted to get the sounds I heard from Dave Weckl especially and my favorite drummers in general, and for sure at that time I didn’t know anything about the kinds of woods or how to tune my drum kit, but after a while a very good friend of mine talked to me about these things, after that I got the Dave Weckl’s teaching video “Back To Basics.” On the other hand I had a very big problem with practicing and it was all about speed and goodness! I wanted to be a very fast drummer and very good too as quickly as possible, which was a very wrong idea of course, then I understood that I must take my time practicing and listening to many kinds of music to be that good, and I am working on it until now. 

Tell me about the bands you played with, the bands you are currently in and the first band you ever played with.

Man that’s a lot, but okay let’s start with the first band I played in, it was “HELIUM” we covered lots of artists, like Malmsteen, Joe Satriani, Alice cooper, Annihilator and MEGADETH.

**Note: IT’S A CRAZY BAND.

I played with many local and international bands and projects. Let’s begin with the local bands: (Nagham Masry, The Riff band, Rashad Fahim, Salalem, Limousine, Sirens, and Forgotten Notes) and different international projects such as Music Matbakh, Darrell John Kennedy and Ruba Sakr who’s a singer from Jordan, and I have recorded an album with Yacoub, a bassist from Jordan.

My current bands are: Sahra, Eftikasat, The Percussion Show and The 19th band, who have a very strange formation, which is:

Guitars: Ousso and Marwan shaaban
Bass: Hameed Sabry.
Vocals: Amr Yehia, Adham Roshdy, Shehab and Shady Ahmed.
Drums: Me.

What was your feeling when you were on stage for the first time?

To be honest I don’t want to remember that day again in my life, (laughing) Look, it was a very strange feeling, I was so afraid, my legs couldn’t carry me, my blood pressure was dropping, but I can’t deny that this feeling went away after the second track we played, when the people began to interact with us, oh man that was a very hard day, thank God that day passed.

Did you ever expect that you would reach that level and be one of the best drummers in Egypt?

I didn’t expect this question from you, but anyway I always practice to be a good drummer, because I want to have my unique style in drumming, but to be honest I didn’t expect this position in this period of time, Thank God. 

How do you see the music scene in Egypt in general and the rock and metal scene in particular?

I am so happy for the evolution in the music scene in general, we now have many bands in Egypt playing different styles of music, and of course I am so happy with the efforts in festivals like Cairo Jazz Festival and S.O.S. Music Festival, and no one can deny all the efforts done by El Sawy Culturewheel. As For the rock and metal scene, I don’t know how they’re going now because I am so far from it with the bands I am in now, but I remember the last 2 concerts I played with Sirens and I think the metal concerts are much better than before, the respect for the musicians is much better and the organization of the concerts is very good and the venues are better than the old ones.

Who is your drummer idol?

Actually, I have some idols in my life which I really learned a lot from, the first is (MIKE PORTNOY) the drummer for (DREAM THEATER), he is my rock drummer idol and as for the other styles of music like Fusion or Jazz or Latin they are (Dave Weckl), (Dennis Chambers) and (Marco Minnemann)

What are your plans for the future?

Hmm, my plans for music are to practice more and more to be a very good drummer and musician and I hope that I can play in any of the international festivals. As for my personal life, I want be a helpful person and to be successful in my work.

What would you like to say about the music scene and to your fans?

For the music scene : “I am very proud of the current bands in the scene, you guys are really awesome and never stop it, never ever, and keep on going with more stuff and more different kinds of music.”

For my fans: “I am very happy to play to people like you, and to anyone who wants to be a musician or a drummer, never give up and always remember that PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT.”

“Circus” how did you come up with such name for the band?

Circus: Well, we were considering several names and really funny ones were upon the list as G-string, but then we thought of choosing a name that reveals the nature of the society we are living in, where it’s a huge chaos with a lot of deep inner feelings hidden behind one smile and a show that has to go on day after day no matter what happens. And we intend to show it in our music as well.

Why haven’t we heard about Circus before the rock festival? Was this your first concert or have you performed before in other concerts?

Circus: We’ve actually performed in minor events like universities and within more than one occassion we did street jamming before anyone else thought of doing it. And in the ESK talent show as well, but we were always determnined to not perform in a major event unless we are ready for it as we believe its not by the amount of concerts you perform neither by how big the audience is; its by the amount of influence you can give to even just one listener.

In the rock festival your setlist had a great variety, what genre do you play exactly?

Circus: We can’t name one genre describing our music as its just like we mentioned before its a choatic influenced music; where everyone of us plays what he feels, but if we had to name a genre we would say its a merge of funk rock and alternative rock. 

“Profile” is known that all the members of “Circus” already play in this band exept Bassem your bassist, so can you please tell us about the point and the idea of 2 bands with almost the same members?

Circus: Profile and Circus are two faces of the same coin where we can free our composing capabilities in Circus and enjoy playing amazing acoustic rock covers in Profile.

What was your reaction when you won the 2nd place in Andromida’s Rock Festival?

Circus: We were extremely overwhelmed as it was such a tough competition and most of the bands were so good and there was so much effort put from everyone. But at the end of the day what counts is feeling satisfied about what you are delivering to your audience and we achieved that.

Circus already have some originals, are you planning for any album release soon?

Circus: There are no plans for a complete album release anytime soon but we are intending to record our current tracks specially our single “DILEMMA” and also developing our uncompleted tracks as we have so much in our pockets yet to come.

Are you planning for any summer tours?

Circus: There is definately gonna be a concert before the end of this year and probably we will continue street jamming and focus some on recording our tracks.

How do you see the future of Circus?

Circus: We expect a lot from our originals and we are confident we can do better for we believe. We haven’t thrown our wildest tricks yet.

A word for your fans would be…

Circus: Music is not only ours but yours as well… so we would love to have everybody’s feedback.

Sincerely yours, CirCuS
And thanks man, rock on! m/

The Public” what’s the story behind this name and the interesting logo?

During our first year, all of us were suggesting names and Yass came up with many names and one of them was “The Public Couch” then it turned into “The Public” and we all were in favor of the name. It’s light and easy to remember.

About the logo, Our first logo (The cup logo) Karim just walked in the studio with it one day showed it to us. It got the man, the woman and the cup, they all referred to “The Public” in one way or another.
The new one is made by our friend Tamer. He didn’t like much the old logo (and it was getting kinda old) so he designed and showed us a new one (the current logo) and we liked it a lot.

“The Public” fans are very disappointed because you haven’t performed that much except in El Sawy Rock Festival, can you tell us the reason behind that?
With two dentists in the band, a Pharmacist and a computer scientist doing masters you don’t really get much time. Still we sincerely apologize to our fans for the distant time between our performances.

We admit that we aren’t really the most active band around but we prefer to put a little more effort to polish our tracks and to come up with new ideas. I guess our fans would like to see less of us with high performance rather than more of us but doing not so good.

How did you feel when you won the best original in the 1st rock festival?
Well, it feels pretty good. You see, the “Best original prize” is more gratifying than anything else. It is good to be appreciated for the music you create.
The original prize was a boost that gave us confidence in what we can do, we feel happy that there are people out there who likes -and ready to listen to- the music we compose.

Can you tell us about your reaction when you knew that you won the 3rd place? Because everyone thought that The Public would win a much better place?
Well it’s the jury’s call and they have their criteria, but after all they’re just like us, “a band” but with a different point of view. They can rate our performance with a certain rating but maybe if I was one of the jury and they were performing I’d give them a higher or lower rating. We’re really good friends with them and we agree on lots of things and argue about other stuff but after all we share the same passion for music. But since we agreed to participate in the festival then we should go by its rules and respect the jury’s opinion.

Frankly, we put more consideration into what the audience thinks. They are the ones for whom we play our music to and they are the ones who will eventually decide if we are good or no good for them.
Still we welcome and would like to listen to criticism from everyone including other bands and judges. Basically everyone.

We were really glad that everyone after the concert was telling us that we deserve much better than this rating and they were very pleased with our concerts. This means so much to us

Tell us about your worst and best situations in both rock festivals volume I and II.
Best situation: While we were being awarded the best original prize, they played part of the original song (Phase_1) and we felt that it sounded really good on stage. I mean we are always playing the song but we never had the chance to be the audience of the song.

Worst: When the stage cameraman unwarily unplugged Karim’s keyboards and suddenly Karim’s keyboard wasn’t there. Another one is when the stage monitors (which we hear ourselves through them) were wrecked in the River Hall and were just playing big buzzing sound and we couldn’t hear anything on stage.

The comment that people always say about your performance is the unique output of the band. What’s your secret? Is it your instruments or your experience or both?
Its a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of other stuff. There are two other reasons that we believe they has great impact as well; the first one is that we have been playing for a long time together so we managed to create a blend between our instruments. Such a blend would make you feel you’re listening to songs as a whole band together rather than listening to it as separate instruments, so you feel the soul of the song together.

The other reason is that we are close friends outside the band. This means that inside the band we can tell each other whatever we want and there isn’t any embarrassment or whatsoever, we can tell each other freely when someone spots the other doing something wrong or something that doesn’t sound nice. Believe me, that’s one of the biggest problems that bands have.

Also, we’re always trying to make the most out of playing different instruments, as in “Phase_1” you can see Karim playing two instruments at the same time and using almost every hand/foot/finger he has; to make it a rich-sounding track. Hatem and Yass always try to get different guitar/bass sound effects to take the tracks out of the ordinary style people are used to.

We know that The Public have got some originals, why we haven’t heard about any album yet?
Again, it’s a matter of time. We have lots and lots of materials that require putting together and finalization. The band’s main goal in the next phase is the album. So I guess there will be no more covers!

Are you making a tour this summer like many bands are doing?
There are plans for here and there but nothing confirmed yet. The main focus is on the album, still as mentioned earlier there’s one or two events that are being planned for, you can catch all of our updates on our facebook fan-page.

How do you see the future of “The Public”?
A band with several albums. A band that listeners would recognize by their unique and pleasant sounds and by their constantly new ideas.
At least that’s what we wish for. Our current and biggest fear is that any of the band members travel abroad for a long time leaving the band idle and maybe leading to their disband.

A word to your fans
You keep us going on, Thank You!

Interviewed by: NJ Bakr and Yasser Mohamed