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What's up, guys?
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It is 2025.
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I am Marcel.
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This is Sludge Underground, and welcome to the first video of the year, starting 2025 off with a bang.
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I am diving into the age-old question of is heavy music in South Africa dying?
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Oh, down on my knees begging for mercy, the sky is falling down on me.
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I'll wait for this dark to consume, dark to consume me.
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I didn't deserve this.
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I'll pay for the one mistake.
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This is something that you hear a lot in the metal community, whether it be a question or a statement, and I wanted to dive into it today and give some of my thoughts regarding it.
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This video could easily turn into a deep dive into the history of the South African metal scene, but we're going to be focusing on the here and now and, as it stands, in 2025.
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However, if that is a video you would like to see, let me know in the comments, and I can just have incurable anxiety trying to research that entire history.
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So a lot of these are my thoughts and opinions that stem from having interviewed countless South African metal bands and heavier bands, as well as having been in a heavier band myself and have actively been a part of that scene.
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Firstly, we're gonna dive into infrastructure.
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These are things like venues, promoters, touring agencies and labels, all the things that you fantasize when you think of the scene and what it takes to be a band.
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All the things that you fantasize when you think of the scene and what it takes to be a band and all the things that relate to music in the scene.
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There are only a handful of dedicated music venues across the country that will even accommodate a heavy band.
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And I say dedicated music venue where it is a venue that was made with the intention of live music.
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They have a dedicated backline, they have a dedicated sound guy and it's kind of shaped like a music venue, the most prominent of which being in Johannesburg, pretoria, as well as Cape Town.
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I'm leaving Durban out of this.
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I'm sorry, durban, but a bar with a couple of pallets set to one side as a stage, as an afterthought, doesn't really count in this situation, and with the loss of the Winston that, due to a very specific global event that is apparently a problem to name uh, we lost that.
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That was the last dedicated music venue that was a bastion for heavy music in kzn, really, for that matter, this is not to say that the venues that are out there aren't doing their absolute best to breathe new life into the scene.
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There just aren't enough of them, and that could just largely be due to a demand or a lack thereof.
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There are even fewer promoters or event organizers dedicated to that scene than there are venues and virtually everything else in between the services that are offered.
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I've recently been watching a youtuber called TankTheTech, and what he mostly does is he covers a lot of drama events and different newsworthy topics within his own scene, and In doing so you learn a lot of behind the scenes as to how things work there, how the different pieces of that puzzle fit together, and we don't really have all the pieces.
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That is the big problem.
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A lot of our promotional or events companies are multitasking aspects that usually have dedicated companies catering to them to them, which leads to this kind of jack of all trades, master of none sort of effect, where these companies are doing multiple roles to the best of their ability, but at the end of the day, they do require a dedicated service.
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And while I know comparison is the thief of joy and comparing one scene to another can be very toxic, it does give you some insight as to what is happening where that disconnect is, and that's something that needs to be said.
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And that also leads us to labels, to record labels.
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When I was researching this for this video, I could only find one label that will accommodate heavy bands, that is South African based, and then that is Mongrel Records.
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Mongrel Records is an imprint label of just music.
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I don't know if it's just me who's clueless or if it's indicative of a problem where not many people are even aware of how this works because of how absent it is amongst that particular scene, but I had to look up what an imprint label even was for this video.
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An imprint label refers to a brand or sub-label within a larger record label, essentially a distinct name used to market a specific type of musical artist under the umbrella of the main label, often functioning as a smaller division with its own identity, while still being part of the parent company.
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Essentially, it's a label within a label.
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That was interesting for me because it was something I didn't even know existed, I guess.
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Well, you know right.
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Some of the artists under this label are Daily's, muse, truth and Its Burden.
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I know Rough Magic was under there as well.
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So there are, even though they're all heavier and alternative bands.
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There are actually very few even metal bands on that list.
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I forgot to mention Borgasm.
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Borgasm are the shit dude.
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Go listen to Borgasm.
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But then that begs the question why do we only have one label specifically geared towards heavier music, and the same thing with the venue, a demand or a lack thereof?
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And then we get to the community, which, yeah, this is like walking through a minefield.
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I'm going to be brutally fucking honest with you.
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The South African metal community can be a bit divisive.
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So you have South African metal bands and then you have fans of South African metal, and then you have a whole community of people which make up the largest demographic, which is people who are fans of heavy music but either don't know how to get involved with South African metal or just don't know that it exists, and these three things interact piss poorly with each other.
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It seems like bands are still figuring out how to market themselves to both fans that are already existing within the scene as well as trying to draw new people in who might be fans of their music.
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New people trying to get into the scene are generally pushed away by a couple of factors, whether it's drama within the scene itself or with a particular band or, very commonly, elitism or gatekeeping.
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Which is you like that band?
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You're a piece of shit.
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Stay away from me, stay away from my shows.
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Shockingly, this behavior can be perpetuated by some bands themselves and encouraged by them, which is wild.
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People will pull into this scene and be like hell yeah, this is gonna be a good time.
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These are people like me, when in actuality it's the equivalent of downloading league of legends because you thought arcane was swell and that the people of that community would welcome you.
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Plot Plot twist, they don't.
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While this is the overall perception of the South African music scene, it is not exclusively what it is like.
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There are exceptions, there are people who are wonderful and welcoming, and if you meet those people and they are the people who introduce you to the scene it's very easy to overlook the more negative aspects of it.
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But the trick is, where do you find these people when finding the scene overall can be quite difficult.
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And then we get to the bands themselves.
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South Africa has some of the most talented metal and heavier music artists in the world, if you look at the Wacken finals, where a bunch of South African bands have gotten into the top 10 over the years and some have even won the Warken metal battle.
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If you don't know what varken is, it is one of the biggest metal festivals in the world and they host a battle each year.
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Where can bands from across the world come through to play?
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And south africans have been in that top 10 consistently for the last few years.
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The biggest problem is is that they don't have much to work with.
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This comes back to the infrastructure problem when we go to the venues and whatnot.
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But then there is also a problem with there aren't enough bands to fill certain demographics.
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This this leads to a problem, right?
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This leads to an issue where there are some sub genres that just do not coexist well with each other.
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If you keep taking the core kids and shoving them into a room with the black metal kids, there's going to be a problem.
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There's.
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There are just famously two groups that don't get along well, but that's the problem.
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There just aren't enough bands in a specific genre to fill up a to cater to a specific subgenre, or at least subgenres that coexist well together.
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You know what are you gonna do?
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You're just gonna fucking have a black metal night and it's just gonna be.
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Skatana wept on stage by themselves for like 20 minutes and that's the black metal gig done.
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Sorry guys, you're the only south african black metal band I even know.
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And then, that being said, the last time that I went to a show that catered specifically to a genre or a subgenre was Let there Be Prog, and that was fairly recent though, and it's amazing that we even have enough prog bands to fill up a prog roster, but it was really cool.
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Just, you know that vibe was set, but we end up with a situation where it's you know what, fuck it, they're metal.
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Throw them on the bill and you end up with this like lineup of artists that could, potentially, they're yes, they're all metal, but those subgenres might not necessarily mesh well with each other, and people would want to go to a show, but they don't want to go watch these other bands, and because it doesn't fit what they want to watch, and it's just like this lose-lose situation the bands who are there don't get the audience that they generally would have if it was something that was dedicated to their subgenre or at least, once again, subgenres that coexist well with each other, and that also leads to a problem, and that stems from the fact that there might just not be enough new blood, there aren't enough new faces or they're just not happening fast enough, once again, because they either just don't know or don't care about getting involved in that scene.
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So is the heavy music scene in South Africa actually dying?
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And, at the risk of sounding like a sellout or just a cop out, it's not that clear cut.
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It's not in the best place, but it's also not in the worst place.
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There are a lot of bands doing incredibly amazing things.
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I'm putting South Africa externally, outside the country, but also within the country, where a lot of people like, hey, this is a south african band.
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That's sick.
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But at the same time, there are a lot of factors that are drawing it down, like the lack of venues there are.
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There is inner fighting, there's a lot of drama within the scene and a lot of people just pull away from each other entirely, and that puts us in this.
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It's kind of like a sail of limbo.
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It could go either way.
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It's 50-50.
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If things carry on the way they are now, it's inevitably going to die.
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It's just how it is, because there will be no market from it, because no one will want to get involved.
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However, if the people who are trying to make it a more inclusive place succeed, as well as the fact that new blood comes in and we have more variety, more venues and those type of things.
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Yes, it could very well survive and most likely thrive, but what are your thoughts?
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What do you think about this?
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What are your thoughts about the state of the current scene and what do you think should be done to make it better, and what do you think is currently killing it?
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Let me know in the comments.
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And well, guys, that is the video.
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Please don't forget we have merch for Sludge Underground.
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A link for that will be in the bio of this video.
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If you want to check out any of the artists that we've interviewed there is a whole list Be sure to drop a like, please be sure to subscribe and let us know if you like this format of content and what you would like to see us talk about in this format.
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Once again, guys, peace.
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It's been Marcel.
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This is sludge underground, and much love and good luck for the new year.
