The Grouchy Gaijin's Thoughts on Music and Such

Ahoora is a trio out of Tehran Iran. That's right folks, out of Iran. They contacted me a week or so ago and asked if I'd give a listen to their new album. In the e-mail they mentioned that one of the singles from the album “Crimson Baby” is dedicated to Neda and all who died innocently iin the streets n Tehran during the conflicts of June 2009.

Usually I'm not into political music but I saw the footage of the protests on CNN and remember when that young woman died. I also know that Iran is a repressive theocracy. My first thought was “Whoa , these guys have balls. Isn't Iran a place where they still believe in honor killings and the Taliban are thought of as the kind of boys you'd love to have in the family?”

So I checked out their website. WWW.AHOORA-BAND.COM as well ass their My Space page.

What I found was a metal band. Now I was really interested. Militant Islamic nut jobs wanted to kill a cartoonist for drawing what they considered images disrespectful to the Prophet. I could only imagine the kind of reaction a metal band would incite.

With that I fired up the album they sent me. This is not a metal album. It seems that the band has grown or evolved since their first two albums. Its difficult to put their music in a peg hole. I hear some jazz influences (think the bad plus – in the interview I incorrectly identified their cover of Iron Man as being on Prog it is in fact on the album Give). They also have the keyboard wizardry of Emerson, Lake and Palmer blended with the vocal powers of Peter Murphy. Then as if to say “Hey we haven't totally changed here is some killer guitar” they pull out the stops on some classic metal. (See the track titled Unattended number 2 on Awkward Diary)

In a nutshell these guys are all over the place musically. The thing is that it works though. Ahoora are three very talented guys. They are guys who are pissed off and have a dark side. (Gee I guess living in that kind of society will do that to you,)

Their music is complicated. It also has soul, in the sense that you get the feeling that all of these songs come from the heart. They are very good players and deserve a round of applause.

One of the most striking things is that this album is entirely home produced. It seems that there are no record labels in Iran and studios are really scarce. Their music in no way sounds home produced – it is slick and professional.

Head over to My Space and give their stuff a listen.

On the Grouch scale they get a 5 out of 5 scowls. (4 for the music and 1 for doing what they do where they do it.)

Check out the interview I did with Milad below:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Milad asked me if I could send him a copy of the review before I posted it.  I did, but have not heard anything from him since I received his answers to the interview questions.

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