WHEN AUTHOR EDWARD Banchs released Heavy Metal Africa in 2016, he hoped it would help shine a spotlight on the metal scenes in, well, Africa. Based around his experiences travelling in countries including Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, Madagascar and Mauritius, he saw it as a way of highlighting a branch of ‘global metal’ that was being overlooked. Only, the reception to it wasn’t quite what he had hoped.
“People saw African metal as a novelty,” he says with a frustrated sigh. “They missed that these were deep-rooted scenes of passionate metal fans.”
