It wasn’t quite on the level of Hasselhoff playing the Berlin Wall, but it was certainly inspiring of the band Opeth to decide not to let an armed coup in the Maldives stop them from bringing Swedish death metal to the people of Malé. The police had seized the state-owned TV station at gunpoint, supporters of ousted president Mohamed Nasheed were being beaten in the streets, and the top hospital in Malé declared a state of emergency — but according to the Minivan News (and “minivan” is Dhivehi for “independent,” not “mom-mobile”), Opeth delayed their show by one day and moved it to an indoor venue, but stoutly refused to let political instability inconvenience them any further.
Opeth deserves a toast of the mead-horn for scheduling the show in the first place, since the Maldivian heavy metal scene has been starving for international recognition, despite having a solid local fan base and a slew of home-grown acts like Sacred Legacy and Nothnegal . I used to be skeptical that a tropical island paradise like the Maldives could ever have much to offer a genre of music that was basically invented because the dismal weather of Scandinavia makes it impossible not to think about death, but apparently heavy metal is one of the country’s top cultural exports and the envy of every other Maldivian music scene.
On top of the indifference of big international labels, Maldivian metalheads have also struggled against the rise of Islamic fundamentalism — which will only get worse now that the laid-back and relatively Westernized President Nasheed is gone. It would be going too far to claim that the Islamists orchestrated last week’s coup (which looks more like a simple power grab by partisans of former dictator Mahmoud Abdul Gayoom, perhaps in combination with the resort lobby ), but they certainly formed an alliance of convenience with those who did, for which they were rewarded with a Pakistani-educated home minister in the new cabinet.
So that’s another difference between Hasselhoff in Berlin and Opeth in Malé: Opeth’s guy lost.
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