Good news for Metal fans allover the planet. Arsames, the Iranian band which were sentenced to 15 years of prison, have sucessfully fled from their country.
Via Loudwire.
Iran has a long history of suppressing creative freedom, famously sentencing Confess to over 14 years in prison and 74 lashes. Metal is viewed as a Satanic form of music in Iran, which violates the country’s strict blasphemy laws and could result in execution.
Arsames continue
“We [were] arrested in 2017 when we were in our studio during rehearsal. They moved us to jail that day and [did] not [tell] our family about where we [were] for a week. Finally after nearly a month later we paid bail to come out of prison and they told us you should not work, release [or sell] your merch until your final court … and do not talk with media! Our Instagram page, official website … banned and they shot down all for a year, but we built a new Instagram again and [started] to be active until few weeks ago [when] the court called us again and they gave us 15 years [in] prison. So we had to escape from Iran.”
The metal band recently posted a video to their official YouTube channel explaining their sentence, which was handed down by the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Mashhad, in further detail.
“Is it a crime that we are playing metal music!?” they begin. “Is it [a] crime that we are talking about Persian history?! Is it a crime that you think we are into Satanism when we have songs about Cyrus the Great and monotheism!? Is it a crime that we love music and our country?!”
The exact band’s location isn’t known. If you want to support the band please go to their Facebook and Instagram pages and check out their music via Bandcamp.
I’m just a lucky guy who has chosen metal to live with for a long time. Metal changed my life for good. It made me more confident and stronger. Metalheads are naturally far away from the mass mediocrity and don’t accept impostures from anybody else. Metal is more than music, it’s a life changing oportunity!