Iraqi Heavy Metal Band ACRASSICAUDA Denied Exit Visas To Attend Film Festival

ACRASSICAUDA, the Iraqi heavy metal band which now lives in Damascus, Syria (where the men are among more than 1.2 million Iraqis seeking refuge from a war-torn nation),has been denied exit visas to attend the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, where a documentary focusing on their story, "Heavy Metal in Baghdad", is currently being shown. Furthermore, the group's publicist told Entertainment Weekly that the Syrian government is threatening to send the rockers home, and added that "their lives are in real danger."

According to NPR, ACRASSICAUDA (Latin for "black scorpion") began with the high school friendship of four young men in Iraq whose fascination with American rock music led them to form their own band.

Inspired in part by the 1990s Grammy-award-winning megaband METALLICA, the Iraqi men became famous, and infamous, for daring to infuse their native land with a culturally foreign sound known to Americans as "heavy metal."

Suroosh Alvi, co-founder of Vice magazine, spent the past few years filming ACRASSICAUDA — first, as the band tried to pioneer a heavy metal scene in Baghdad, and then as it fled to Damascus.

The "Heavy Metal in Baghdad" documentary synopsis reads as follows: "In 2003, just after the U.S. toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein, Vice magazine published an article on the only heavy metal band in Iraq, ACRASSICAUDA. The Baghdad-based band was formed in the last few years of Saddam's rule and aside from the typical problems every band has, they also had to deal with the stigma of playing dark western music in an Islamic state under Baath party rule, while coming out of a decade of war, sanctions, and poverty. We found their story inspiring. When we interviewed the band they were excited to be living in a newly freed Iraq, and their future seemed limitless. They even talked of recording an album. Things took a turn for the worse, however. After a few months respite, the situation in free Iraq deteriorated quickly and by the end of the year, after a few key insurgent attacks, the bombing at the UN building, the massive strike at the grand Shi'a mosque in Najaf, Iraq started to unravel. We stayed in touch with the band through this time and in the fall of 2006, with the insurgency reaching a fevered pitch, Vice co-founder Suroosh Alvi and VBS Producer Eddy Moretti decided to visit them."

For more information on "Heavy Metal in Baghdad", visit the film's official web site at this location. The band's blog can be found here.