March 24, 2006

Black Metal Banned in Malaysia
   by DarknessJoe <metal-head_616@hotmail.co.uk>

After a recent trawl through the glory that is the Internet, I can safely say that I have found something that makes me lose more faith in humanity than most things: in Malaysia, the authorities have banned black metal bands. This means that people can't form black metal bands. The reasoning for this is that it will get in the way of their faith! Now, I'm not going to go into religion here, but banning black metal deprives people of their rights - the right to listen to what they want. At the moment (from what I saw, anyway), the punishments are unclear at the moment, and it is not said if the law would strech to simply listening to it or attending concerts or whatever. But the fact that they use religion as part of an excuse to ban something that they just don't like is, quite frankly, crap. They say that it gets people to rebel against society and cause violence (keeping in mind that the infamous church burnings in the 90s in Norway are long gone, now it's more about the music). They say it leads people into a life of occultism and other "nasty" things. But not everyone who listens to black metal is turned to the occult - look at me, I listen to black metal and I'm (sort of) okay! Regardless of people's opinions on what it SOUNDS like, black metal should not be banned. Anywhere. Thank you for your time.

Published: April 2, 2006
Editor: stacy