This story originally appeared in i-D’s The Royalty Issue, no. 370, Winter 2022. Order your copy here.
Heavy metal is not background music. It is not the sort of music fans listen to in order to mindlessly distract themselves from the mundanity of the world around them: it’s music someone listens to in order to push back against the status quo. Metal is honest. It holds a mirror up to society and reflects its flaws. It celebrates outsiders and those who feel different.
Metal is a spirit and an attitude as well as a musical style. It’s a way of standing out and standing apart. In terms of style, that sentiment has long been translated outwardly through fans who represent their favourite bands on their T-shirts, alongside a wardrobe of dusted-out, haggard leather jackets with self-stitched patches, denim jeans, worn canvas sneakers or boots that mean business. It’s a style that has, since its inception, found roots across the world: from Scandinavia to Japan, Brazil to Turkey. It has also found roots in Africa – most noticeably in Botswana.
The MaRock, as metal fans are known in Botswana, are often celebrated for the raw passion they exude for heavy metal and the idiosyncratic style they’ve brought to the subculture: part classic metal looks, part hardcore punk attitude, part Wild West cowboys.
They are known for sporting head-to-toe leather – boots, hats, belts, vests, jackets, chaps – and for the bombastic monikers they use, pulled from the recesses of heavy metal’s wild subconscious: Trooper, Gunsmoke, Viper Lawless, Mental Case, Suicide Torment, and Vulture.
Fans have been known to include props as a way of distinguishing themselves from others too, incorporating ropes, chains, whips, masks, skulls, animal bones, crosses, and plenty of metal spikes. Others opt for accessories that are just plain over-the-top. One notable fan is known as the “tea guy,” and attaches a tea set to his belt, including a teacup, plate, and spoon. The MaRock have turned their passion for metal into a small competition to be more extreme than anyone else.
The metal world in the West had a leather penchant once too, embodied on Motörhead’s famed Ace of Spades album cover or by iconic Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford (one of the band’s classics is even called “Hellbent for Leather”). Yet leather’s once-near ubiquitous use has fallen largely by the wayside, and heavy metal has become a subculture with an unconventional, virtually antagonistic relationship to the fashion world. But the MaRock are undoubtedly stylish and this scene – which has blossomed mostly in isolation over the past two decades – has grown in interest to those around the world who value individuality and expression in the way people dress.
Botswana’s heavy metal scene has evolved, since the formation of the band Nosey Road in the 70s, to become one of the most visible music scenes in the African continent. Whether it is the ferocious, ear-grabbing pummeling of venerated metal acts that include Overthrust, Skinflint, and Wrust, or the superbly passionate fan base, there’s something uplifting in it.
Vulture says it is this scene’s sense of community and kinship that has not only helped local bands reach overseas audiences, but also bonded them together in the name of benevolence. The mastermind behind the Overthrust Winter Metal Mania Festival, which has been held in the country’s northern city of Ghanzi continually for over thirteen years, the MaRock have helped him raise money for local orphanages, food banks and schools. October of 2022 also marked the debut of Vulture Thrust Metal Fest, a festival he organised in the central Botswana village of Rakops, his hometown, which features multiple days of head-banging fury to raise funds for children living with disabilities.
Sonically, the metal of Botswana is very much in line with the templates established by metal’s iconic acts, while forging a niche of their own, wavering between grit, fury, and precision. The punk-infested death metal of Overthrust, layered skin-tight grooves of Wrust, the Iron Maiden-esque touch of Skinflint, the fury of STANE, and the grabbing hooks of Metal Orizon, are just a sample of what Botswana’s metal scene has been crafting. Given Botswana’s economic and social stability, bands here use their music to discuss mental health issues, loss, and even aspects of their country’s history, while mainly avoiding the political themes that their neighbours in South Africa or counterparts in Kenya have come to embrace.
For Overthrust vocalist and bassist Vulture, the MaRock have made themselves so noticeable and known for a simple reason: “Because they feel special, confident, powerful and unique. They feel like metal in a plastic society, they feel like the machines of the world and as such, they seek attention.”
Credits
Photographer Oliver Hadlee Pearch
Fashion Carlos Nazario
Hair and make up Alet Viljoen at *SNCM using NARS
Photography assistance John Second
Fashion assistance Manuel Noriega Torres, Edna Rosen and Ncinci Motsemme
Tailor Gaekgone Lesego
Tailoring assistance Dorcus Mabe
Production Baker & Co.
Casting by Tshomarelo Mosaka aka Vulture Thrust. Models Mental Case, Psycho, Chainblock, Crow, Midnight, Forest, Boyke, Seth, Hunter, Dals Leppard and Rock Angel