Last night I watched Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the Spike Jonze-executive produced VICE documentary, which is screening in Portland one night only, this Tuesday at 8 pm at the Someday Lounge. I’ll have my review of the film up tomorrow, but if you haven’t already heard, or at least heard of (in addition to VICE coverage they’ve been featured on NPR, BBC News, etc) “the only Iraqi metal band,” Acrassicauda (named after a deadly black scorpion found in the deserts of Iraq), this clip from Al Jazeera gives a synopsis:

Acrassicauda isn’t exactly the greatest sounding metal band out there (hear the three songs they managed to record (with the help of VICE) while living as refugees in Damascus on their MySpace page), but their story is amazing: Plucked from a population of millions of refugees fleeing Iraq, their esoteric (by Iraqi standards) music preferences might save them. VICE has been collecting donations, through which the band has already managed to get to Istanbul after foreign visa policy changes in Syria threatened to send them back into the belly of the beast (er, Baghdad). Plus, as they themselves point out in the film, they came up playing metal in a place where life is really like this: