Black metal often claims to be a scene of rebels and angry outcasts, until you realise that a good majority of it is just middle-class Westerners using their art to complain that their ancestors converted to Christianity and deprived them of the opportunity to roleplay as vicious pagan warriors (never mind that 99% of their ancestors were probably peasants and indentured servants or that they were the ones violently converting others and not vice-versa). Now, areas like the Middle East and the Levant (among many others), always had and still have reasons and stories to fuel the black metal scene ten times over, which is why we are always excited to present bands outside the Western sphere.

Xwîn‘s location may say Turkey, but it comes from a person whose very identity is denied, a Kurdish woman, a member of one of the many ethnic, religious and cultural groups that colonialism and the enforcement of the nationalist ethnostate decided was not necessary and should be erased. How the Kurdish people reacted to this is both public knowledge by now, and an example to all who wish to fight against imperialism without succumbing to regressive nationalisms themselves.

Xwîn Bi Xwînê Tê Şûştin is unsurprisingly a passionate album, one full of anger and sadness but also hope. Written in the Kurdish language in a country where that alone could land you in prison and riffs that cut like a razor, dressed in a raw but still epic atmosphere, this is what black metal is all about. These are the bands that make us feel that there is still hope in this snake-infested scene (human snakes, not regular ones, those are cool), the people that make all this worthwhile.

Never forget, and never stop shouting: Jin, jiyan, azadî.

⚔️ XWÎN ⚔️

BC: https://xwin.bandcamp.com/album/xw-n-bi-xw-n-t-tin