South African Metal Music Awards judge destigmatises metal

MANY people, including music lovers, are guilty of stigmatising the genre that is heavy metal, a genre that is as multi-layered as any other mainstream one like hip-hop and house music.

I recently sat down with New Germany resident and South African Metal Music Awards judge, Matthew Ryan Howes and his business partner, Jamie Visagie, who’s been in the industry since the early 80s.

The duo are enthusiastic about the local music industry and the niche genre, Metal, that can also be seen as a sub-culture.

Howes and Visagie recently hosted a metal event at the Shongweni Polo Club called Pit at the Polo.

The event was a success and gained a lot of traction online. “We created this event and it gained a lot of attention from the metal-heads around the country,” said Howes.

“The audience included people from under 18 to people in their 60s,” added Howes who also highlighted how committed the metal fans are.

“The metal community is very passionate and nationally, all the metal-heads know each other from all over, even if they’ve met each other physically. We’ve had guys from Cape Town and Jo’burg contact us about how amazing the event was and all the people that ignored Durban in the past are taking notice.”

ALSO READ: Station Masters’ owner caught up in homophobic row

Visagie said: “It’s opening a lot of doors with all the pictures that are circulating on Facebook and even though we favour metal, we want to capture some more live music in the area.” Howes has been in-love with music since he was 16-years-old, and throughout his upbringing, he has been a fanboy to music.

“I was one of those guys that knew every lyric to every song and I could even tell you the order of the album and who the producer was and every single band member.”

His first concert was the Smashing Pumpkins in Grade 11 in 2000. Howes has been playing in a few bands in the past, including local band, Killing Iris in the mid 2000s which was a hybrid between two other popular bands, Detach and Bora.

According to Howes, who will be judging the SAMMA’s for the third year running, South Africa has more than enough talent to rival international bands.

“This country has more than a dozen bands that can easily rival international talent, but metal is a niche market and when you go to America or Europe it’s more widely accepted, while here it still has that stigma attached to it.

ALSO READ: Hill and Penn’s pitch-perfect performance pairs well with Nat King Cole 

Howes also said: “With a lot of people leaving the country it’s becoming more difficult judging the awards and we’re now forced to group categories. We used to have categories for all the different sub-genres and that’s not the case anymore.”

Howes is a qualified sound engineer with more than 1000 shows under his belt and a front-man for his band. He stresses the importance for metal bands to get themselves out there and play in as many venues as possible to be eligible for the awards.

“There’s some amazing bands out there but they’ve only played two shows, which isn’t enough. Durban only has one proper venue for metal and that’s The Winston, which is obviously very bad. I always tell bands that they shouldn’t play at one venue all the time. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if I’ve seen you six times in the last four months, I’m going to get over you. I’m very strict with bands when it comes to this.”

Howes importantly noted that some cities have an upper hand when it comes to venues, compared to Durban. “Jo’burg and Cape Town have a lot of places so then we had to even the playing field by counting the number of shows that a band has played.” The submissions have been done for the awards and are waiting refinement. It’s all a process that Howes calls a difficult one with all the rules and criteria that need to be followed.

Do you want to receive alerts regarding this and other Highway community news via Telegram? Send us a Telegram message (not an SMS) with your name and surname (ONLY) to 060 532 5409.

You can also join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

PLEASE NOTE: If you have signed up for our news alerts you need to save the Telegram number as a contact to your phone, otherwise you will not receive our alerts.

Here’s where you can download Telegram on Android or Apple.

To receive our free newsletter click here.