Playing metal can be a matter of life and death, no more so than in Iran. Earlier this year, the death metal band Arsames were forced to flee the country after being arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2017, having been freed on bail.

 

Two years earlier, Nikan Khosravi, and Arash Ilkhani core membes of Tehran-based groove/thrash metallers CONFESS were also arrested, accused of Satanism and faced potential execution for blasphemy. Both were sentenced to 14.5 years in prison, while Nikan was further sentenced to receive 74 lashes.

 

Thankfully, they managed to successfully petition for political asylum in Norway – the same country fellow Tehran exile, From The Vastland’s Sina now resides – continuing the band with two local musicians, Erling Malm and Roger Tunheim Jakobsen as touring partners.

 

CONFESS are currently working on their third album, Revenge At All Costs, and if you want a taster of what’s in store, they’ve just released a lyric video for the song Eat What You Kill. Featuring all manner of creepy, Victorian paraphernalia, including dead-eyed dolls, wince-inducingly wide syringes and formaldehyde-immersed foetuses, alongside spectacular shots of their adopted home and a host of other images, visually it comes across like a randomised stimulus-response test.

 

It also provides a suitably erratic backdrop for a song that will sit with you much in the manner of an implanted Xenomorph chestburster who’s gestation period has been given to working out overtime.

 

Eat What You Kill is a testament to metal’s indomitable nature, and while CONFESS are far from the Satanists they were accused of, their music is geared to cause a commotion in the only pit that matters.