A day of new stuff...

First and foremost, big thanks to Manda Ashby at In Skin, Tunbridge Wells, for a painless couple of hours resulting in the epically good bit of ink you can see at the bottom of this page. If you need any serious tatt work done, give MADman a shout and I'll put you in touch. A load of our crew have work from Manda and every piece is fucking ace.

Following on from a nice new bit of scarring, I dutifully adjourned to the public house for light ale and civilised conversation. One of these conversations was with SNM, our resident Namibian mentalist. When he's not challenging people to drink their body weight in Jaegermeister, SNM is a follower of the metal church and suggested I have a wee looky at African metal band K.O.B.U.S; as a wannabe scribe, it was my duty to do so.

K.O.B.U.S. sing entirely in Afrikaans so with the exception of "fuck", you can understand pretty much sod all in terms of lyrics. However, I've yet to meet anyone who can sing along word for word with George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher so this really isn't a problem. The first track I experienced was "Honger", which is a simple but effective three-minute chug that no doubt incites absolute bedlam when played to the fans. Then only problem I had with the song is the accompanying video. It looks like a couple of pretentious students have tried to remake The Shining, Phantom Of The Opera and The Prodigy's infamous "Smack My Bitch Up" video in their parent flat on a budget of £20. Quite frankly, laughably bad. But that's beside the point. "Honger" is a stamp-around-with-an-angry-face belter with real parallels to be drawn with Motorhead in terms of the vocal style, speed and the guitar tone. Combine this with a Max Cavalera-esque pitch to vocalist Francois Breytenbach Blom's rantings and you've got a serious metal moment.

"Tienerangs" (roughly translated as "Teenage Angst") is subtitled and as such, makes it a bit easier to understand. As you can probably gauge from the title, the tune is savage assault on all things whingey and emo, with numerous suggestions that the perpetrators of regular complaints should engage in intercourse with themselves. The song itself is faster than "Honger" but for me, it doesn't have the same impact. I can't help but think this sort of "fuck you" message has been done. And done. And done.

"Hoenderman" is a song about dreaming of chickens that drink our beer, apparently. Fuck knows....

K.O.B.U.S are a not brutal but they are fucking heavy. The harshness of the Afrikaans inflection in Francois Breytenbach Blom's vocals adds a rawness to the music which gives it that garage feel. You an imagine watching these guys destroy a room, then go to the bar for a beer with their fans. They're simple, angry, harsh, and want to kick your face in.

I know little of African metal but seemingly there are some bands making real moves to cross over from local heros to international names. K.O.B.U.S are only on my radar due to SNM's recommendations but based on this mob, I can see myself exploring this interesting genre further. If you like it heavy, give them a listen - the K.O.B.U.S MySpace link's in my Cool Shit list as per.

Until next time...