Katingation - 2 Legs 1 Arm (Full-Length Album - 2013) - Bandcamp Stream

BIOGRAPHY

The Katingation is a trio of the province of Kuando Kubango, and this EP released on May 31, 2013. On the album, the listener is faced with elements of African culture, as well as remnants of its history.

The work is to focus the discussion on the death metal appropriation - sub-genre characterized by "negative emotions" such as hatred, aggression and nihilism - in "peripheral" areas, seeking to understand how this sub-genre is used to re- mean social conflict scenarios and insecurity, marked by poverty, violence, death and war. It analyzes the album "2 legs one arm" released through the internet by the Angolan group Katingation in 2013.

The first thing that calls attention concerning Katingation band and its existence has been questioned in forums focused on the subgenres and, according to informants Angolan metal scene, between the bands themselves circuit, since the group has never been seen in presentations to live or in meetings of local musicians, and their origin is a mystery to the members of the scene.

However, in posts on the social network, the traces of the band, including the [alleged] physical condition of its members allow us to make preliminary observations about the group - from the cover and the title of the album, which They suggest the mutilation of leg two members as a consequence of the Civil War:

"We are pleased with the record. It took a lot to write the songs cuz the drummer was recording double pedal so with one leg" (KATINGATION FACEBOOK, 2013, online).

Formed in the province of Kuando Kubango, the trio of vocalist Ngombe Semedo, bassist and guitarist Katito Mutungula and drummer Tchissakwe Matisse features nine songs, sung in English, traveling through varied interpretations of death, violence and other situations of threat social well-being in the local context.

The opening track, "Kijibanganga",  the listener and transported to a soundscape evoking a scenario of violence, with sounds of gunfire and noise of elephants and other large mammals on the run. It seems that the instrumental composition represents the extinction of elephants and rhinos, caused by illegal hunting for ivory trade  no problem only in Angola but in other countries of the continent, thus triggering, in the opening, elements that make up the transnational dimension of the identity of musicians, supporting the observation of Hall that "cultural identities are points of identification, the unstable points of identification or suture, which are made within the discourse of history and culture. No one essence, but positioning ".

This first identitario positioning articulate other, more connected to national and local aspects, which can be seized in the following analyzed songs. In the eighth song, "Enter the township of death", for example, the fusion of tribal sounds to the weight of death metal in two minutes and four seconds of duration, composes the scenario of approximation with death in the sphere of slums  the Luanda capital. "Enter the township of death, where the sun is black, and the sky is dead" announce the guttural of Ngombe.

More than just shelter residents with low economic and social level, constituted the slums of local resistance to colonialism Portuguese during the movements of independence at the beginning of the 1960s. Verses "Enter the township of death, where the dirt starts, and the world ends" talk about the huts built in those areas of reddish sands of Luanda. These constructions are homes of individuals expelled from the city center due to urban expansion or the new immigrants. Thus, the representation of this social sphere earns an "oppressive" air passages: "Enter the township of death, where the wind do not blow, and heat reigns"  and "Enter the township of death, where you ' ll live, die and die again."

In the sixth track, "Machimbombo Flat Tire",  a third aspect of identitarias and exploited positions: the local man facing death on a daily basis from the lack of investment in transport and urban mobility. From Trio experience with means of public transportation [machimbombo], the letter refers the force of chance and risk in the displacement of residents between African provinces of Benguela, Huambo, the capital Luanda and Kuando Kubango. "On the path to Benguela, The Machimbombo had a flat tire," "On the path to Huambo, The Machimbombo had a flat tire," "On the path to Luanda, The Machimbombo had a flat tire." "On the path to Kuando Kubango, The Machimbombo had a flat tire."

Between passages of screaming and growling vocals, the listener is transported to the disorder and the insecurity faced by people who use these public transport means: tires stick and vehicles "break" or travels overcrowded; the conditions of roads and vehicles themselves are precarious; speeding drivers puts passengers at risk, transforming thus the use of machimbombo in one of the routine experiences of approximation with danger: "The boredness starts to settle among us, As we walk towards our destination: death."

Finally, in the ninth band, the social risk narrated and another, the presence of landmines, "planted" in African territories during the Civil War: "Spoils of war in your backyard Do not step over your crops.".

Kuando Kubango, province of group origin, served as the first base of UNITA. Verses discourse on this social context the interpretation of the strategic position of this territory in armed conflicts in the past and the presence of minefields these days: "Landmines, seeds of death, Enjoy the fireworks."  Thus, the song the group can be heard as a witness of how Angola faced with remnants of his violent past: "Do not take your legs for granted, They may go out out with a bang."

All the songs so maps various aspects of urban life and the relationship of the people with its recent past of wars and struggles; and points to the way the marks of the death metal genre may be appropriate as a means of representation of the Angolan identity, with songs whose narratives connect the present to the past of this nation, linking the livings of the musicians collective memory.

Thus, if the memory is understood as a process - always in dispute and reinvention - in which subjects are positioned, and collectively build narratives that give meaning to this; and that the means of communication and medias - the music included among them - act as actors who produce "frameworks", the appropriation of death metal in a peripheral social space can demonstrate a specific case of this process.

In this regard, as was anticipated in the introduction, the hatred, aggression and other "negative emotions" of death metal are channeled not in the direction of nihilism, but as productive elements, which act as way of construction of the catalysts for a share of the Angolan youth . The death metal and therefore driver affections and convening of a group, that maybe - it is worth asking - do not identify with the more culturally legitimized musical genres in the country, such as Semba and Kuduro, demonstrating how identities encompass different ways in which the subjects are positioned by the narratives of the past.

This paper aims to address the appropriation of death metal in peripheral scenarios, based on perspective that relates the cultural codes of the subgenres to reinterpretation processes of episodes of social conflicts, violence and wars.

From the brief analysis of an album of the Angolan band Katingation, conducted exploratory way, were collected some clues that point to two sets of issues.

The first set of tracks with respect to investigation of the metal genre and construction of Angola death metal scene. With more questions than answers about this little visible scene in the global scenario, we sought to demonstrate that the Katingation band keeps true to some of the "rules of genre," as those concerning the sound marks metal, convened through the guttural and aggressive vocals, the distortions, the rhythmic speed, the lyrics sung in English and utilization of chords "classics" of death metal. On the other hand, "redirects" the hatred and aggression of the letters to reinterpret the recent memory of his parents about the Civil War and the everyday social and violence conflicts, turning thus nihilism without apparent target of death global metal production in a narrative of local meanings.

The second set of issues concerns the relationship of cultural products with the collective memory. In this case, the track and that musical genres can also function as "memory places", which, alongside monuments to, dates, historical characters and literature, consolidate the sense of belonging and negotiate social boundaries between groups.

In this sense, it proposes and think this album as a testimony that contributes to the construction of a "historic milestone" in the form of a memorial for social conflict victims. Memorial no longer represented by a physical monument, but by memories "dematerialized and reconfigurable" - and perhaps ephemeral - conveyed by the album on the Internet, and whose meanings continue to resonate after the conclusion of this text, calling the new "wiretapping dedicated ", to be recorded in future work.

LINE UP
Ngombé Semedo - Vocals
Katito Mutungula - Guitar, Bass
Tchissakwe Matisse - Drums

Country of origin: Angola
Location: Kuando Kubango
Genre: Death Grind Metal

Current Label: Unsigned/Independent
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katingation
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/katingation
Last FM: http://www.last.fm/music/katingation
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/katingation
Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/107059103984625711108

2 Legs 1 Arm (Full-Length  Album - 2013)