One Band Moves Its Metal Out of Iraq (Acrassicauda)

NYT
February 3, 2009
One Band Moves Its Metal Out of Iraq
By BEN SISARIO

It was a heavy metal miracle.

Acrassicauda had been through hell as a rock band in wartime Baghdad. Its practice space was bombed. Its members were branded Satan worshipers and received death threats for making Western-style music. Then they suffered through two purgatorial years as refugees in Syria and Turkey, killing time and dreaming of rocking out in the land of the free.

And on Sunday night, two days after the last of the band’s four members was resettled in the United States, they enjoyed what any metal fan would have to call heaven: bearhugs and “Wow, dude” heart-to-hearts backstage with Metallica at the Prudential Center in Newark. It probably wasn’t necessary for James Hetfield, Metallica’s lead singer, to surprise them after the show by handing over one of his guitars, a black ESP, and signing it “Welcome to America”; their minds were already blown.

“That’s for keeping the faith,” Mr. Hetfield said, adding as he disappeared with his entourage down a corridor, “Write some good riffs.”

Acrassicauda’s rock ’n’ roll faith was traced in a documentary, “Heavy Metal in Baghdad,” released in 2007. That film portrayed the members as ordinary if tenacious rock Joes amid the most extraordinary circumstances, and they continue to embody those roles in their new lives.

The United States government has granted them refugee status, which allows them to apply for green cards in a year, and the International Rescue Committee has placed them in a modest one-bedroom apartment in Elizabeth, N.J., where there are as yet no Metallica or Slayer posters on the walls but a bundle of guitars are piled in one corner.

“This is more than we ever could have expected or dreamed of,” said Firas Al-Lateef, 27, the bassist, who arrived four months ago.

Backstage after the Metallica show, Mr. Al-Lateef giggled in disbelief along with two of his band mates, Faisal Talal, 25, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist, and Marwan Riyadh, the drummer, who was the last to arrive. (The lead guitarist, Tony Aziz, who will turn 30 on Wednesday, was in Michigan working to bring over family from Iraq; heads were shaken gravely over his unfortunate timing.) It was only the second full rock concert they had ever attended, after seeing the venerable Testament in Turkey.

But they say they are acutely aware that another set of challenges lies before them, as they set out to make good on their commitment to play music and compete in the open marketplace of metal.

“We’re good at process,” said Mr. Riyadh, 24, who has previously used the name Marwan Hussain. “Going to the U.N.H.C.R.,” he said, referring to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “standing in a queue for three or four hours. We’re good at that. But musically, we need to practice.”

There may not be many metal bands from Baghdad, but as refugees the members of Acrassicauda (pronounced “a-crass-a-COW-da” and derived from the name of a species of black scorpion) are far from alone, and not all have made it through the same hoops.

Of as many as two million Iraqi refugees around the world, only 13,000 were admitted to the United States in fiscal year 2008, which ended on Sept. 30, and another 17,000 are scheduled for fiscal 2009. An official at the State Department said that in the last 18 months, 47 of the Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States have been musicians.

“They were very fortunate to make it through the system,” Bob Carey, the vice president for resettlement and migration policy at the International Rescue Committee, said of the band. “Some of that is due to perseverance, some of it is advocacy and some of it is luck.”

Acrassicauda’s primary advocate has been Vice, the Brooklyn-based magazine and media company that made “Heavy Metal in Baghdad.” Vice is better known for wisecracking pop-culture commentary than humanitarian aid, but it has been working tirelessly on the band’s behalf for a year and a half.

Vice tried to help resettle the members to Canada and Germany, and kept them afloat with cash — as much as $40,000 paid from Vice’s own coffers, sponsors and donations collected online, according to Suroosh Alvi, a founder of the company and one of the directors of the film.

“We had outed them and endangered their lives,” Mr. Alvi said on the way to the Prudential Center, where a small Vice crew was filming every handshake and wide-eyed glimpse of Metallica’s mountains of equipment. “They were receiving threats from Iraq while they were in Syria.” He added, “We had a responsibility.”

The band members insist that they received no special treatment from any government agency. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, does not comment on specific cases, but to qualify for refugee status all applicants must demonstrate that they face persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or social group.

For these musicians, playing metal could be enough to make them a target for extremists, and they still fear for the safety of their families in Iraq.

“Sometimes I feel kind of guilty, because I am in a safe place and they are not, just because of me,” said Mr. Al-Lateef. “I am risking their lives to be in a heavy metal band.”

But a heavy metal band is what they are committed to be, and they chafe at the idea that too much attention is being paid to their being refugees and not enough to the music they have risked their lives and fled their homeland to make.

“What I want to be is a musician,” Mr. Riyadh said. “I want to release an album. But you feel all this pressure by the media. It’s like, do you care about me because I’m a musician or do you care about me because you think my story is interesting?”

Evidently Metallica finds Acrassicauda very interesting, and on Sunday Acrassicauda did not seem to mind. Before the show, the three band members were ushered through the production labyrinth backstage, where they were showered with attention from their heroes. Each of the four members of Metallica came separately — attended by numerous handlers — to pay respects, talk shop and hold up the devil horns for photo after photo.

Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist, came by last, diligently warming up his fingers on his unplugged guitar as he talked. “You guys represent the passion that comes along with playing this music,” he said.

The members of Acrassicauda arrived back at their apartment in Elizabeth well past midnight with armfuls of Burger King food for their dinner, but Mr. Talal went straight for the new guitar he had just received from Mr. Hetfield and plugged it into a tiny Peavey amplifier on the floor. With the volume low, he started playing Metallica riffs, and looked up.

“Wow,” he beamed, and then went back to the guitar.