BOTSWANA’S COWBOY METALHEADS

Botswana, Africa has a growing scene of metalheads with a cowboy inspired look! Check this out. "The scene’s roots lies in the work of the pioneering Botswanan classic rock band Noisey Road, formed in the 1970s.

Nowadays, it’s split mainly between Gabarone and Botswana’s tourism centre, Maun (known as ‘Maun Rock City’ among scene members) and though it’s still pretty small (about 1,500 fans) what it lacks in numbers it makes up for in solidarity, as Thuto Motladiile of the band Skeletal Saints emphasises." From vice mag

"Coffinfeeder"

"Dethguard"

"Maximum"

"Medicine Man"

"White Devil"

"Morgue Boss"

"Giuseppe Sbrana is the lead guitarist and vocalist with the band Skinflint. He’s also one of the few white metallers in Botswana, and reckons that the scene’s dress code is ‘old school.’

“A good example of where we get the style from is Motorhead’s Ace Of Spades cover,” he says. “Also, many metalheads in Botswana are cowboys from the villages and farms, so they mix the cowboy image with a biker metal look. Many wear hunting knives and parts of dead animals. We drink from the hollowed-out cow horns.”

PHOTOS: FRANK MARSHALL
WORDS: KEITH KAHN-HARRIS

Frank Marshall’s Visions of Renegades exhibition will be showing at the Rooke Gallery in Johannesburg in July.
Keith Kahn-Harris is the author of Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. He blogs at metaljew.org.