Session 3A: Subculture
Session 3A: Subculture
Chair: Colin McKinnon
Pentagram (A.KA. Mezarkabul): Founders of Turkish Heavy Metal
Ilgin Ayik
İstanbul Technical University, Center For Advance Studies in Music (MİAM), Turkey
This study’s aim is the comparative analysis of the band’s music and its influences.
As a result, one will be able to understand the mechanism of blending different kinds of musical genres in the band’s songs. It will be also possible to observe the diverse aesthetical criteria of composition according to Turkish and European ears. The band’s unique position will be stressed by highlighting their way of using specific musical components like phrygian mode with kürdi maqam characteristics, or rhythmic patterns like 7/8 and 10/8 with usul (rhythmic pattern) and velvele (rhythmic embellishment) characteristics. These specialities will show their distinction among other heavy metal bands, although they are mentioned with heavy, trash, progressive, oriental and folk metal.
Pentagram (a.k.a Mezarkabul) released the first heavy metal album in Turkey. They founded in 1984 and have released six albums which received great interest both inside and outside of the country. The band performed live firstly in a wedding hall in one of the suburbs of İstanbul. This new musical genre excited the audience such that they broke all the chairs and tables. Pentagram released their first album in 1990 which was sold 30,000 copies, so it became the best selling heavy metal album in Turkey up to then. In 1997, they released ‘Anatolia’ which sold 100,000. The band were invited to perform for a special night organised during Bill Clinton’s visit to Turkey. After this, the band signed a contract with the famous German metal label Noise Records and they released ‘Unspoken’ and ‘Bir’.
The most significant aspect of the band is their interpretation of Turkish maqams and usuls within the heavy metal form and sound by reinforcing it with the Turkish wind instrument ney. They became a pioneer band by blending aşık (Anatolian minstrel) literature, mystic philosophy and janissary music with heavy, trash and progressive metal; and they influenced the next generation Turkish heavy metal bands.
Download Draft Conference Paper – 
Heavy Metal in a Muslim Context: The Rise of the Turkish Metal Underground
Pierre Hecker
Georg-Eckert-Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig, Germany
Today, local heavy metal scenes can be found throughout the Middle East as in almost any other region of the world. Though still marginal in terms of numbers and public attention, the metal scene in the region, particularly in urban centres in Turkey, Lebanon, and Israel, has developed its own infrastructures consisting of bands, magazines, independent labels, distributors, festivals, and bars. The emergence of local metal scenes has taken place within a wider context of globalization. Particularly, the advent of the internet and the evolution of technological means to convert sounds and images into digital data files that can be easily send along a world wide data highway, significantly facilitated the global availability of metal music and culture.
The following pages provide an insight into the emergence of rock and metal culture in Turkey. After a brief introduction into the development of Anatolian rock music in the late 1960s and 1970s, the paper will shed light on the rise of the Turkish metal underground after the military coup d’état of 1980. Due to economic and political hardship, the dissemination of metal music and culture depended very much on informal networks (tape trading, street sellers, fanzines, distros). The Turkish public, however, perceived the invasion of the public sphere by young rockers and metalheads as a potential threat to prevalent concepts of morality.
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