Established Egyptian multimedia artist Nader Sadek will collaborate with several black, death and thrash metal musicians for the upcoming installation, "The Faceless," which will premiere September 6 at Michael Steinberg Fine Art in New York City's Chelsea district, reports Blabbermouth.net.
Ex-Morbid Angel bassist and vocalist Steve Tucker, Emperor and Zyklon drummer Trym, Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick and Obituary, ex-Deicide and ex-Death guitarist Ralph Santolla have joined Sadek for the project, as have Middle Eastern musician Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Weird Al Yankovic bassist Miles Jay, Raquy and the Cavemen drummer Liron Peled and percussionist Raqay Danziger.
The "Faceless" project will feature a soundtrack that alternates between death metal and Arabic music alongside Sadek's "uniquely installed drawings which juxtapose the iconographies of death metal and Middle Eastern fundamentalism, which outsiders often associate with darkness, moon worship, and anti-Christian fervor." According to the report, the installation "startles the audience into rethinking connections between these two frequently misunderstood and vilified cultures."
"For a while now, I've been interested in exploring what different cultures perceive of as extreme," Sadek said. "'The Faceless' grows out of years of walking the crowded streets of Downtown Cairo dressed as a full-on death metal fan. Then, in a sort of twisted reversal, I decided to walk the streets of New York's Times Square in the black garb of a fully veiled woman. The intense reactions I got in each case confirmed for me the potential of this project. Those experiences inspired me to channel the popular paranoid fantasy in which the fully veiled woman is wrought from a dark death metal world, full of serpents, skulls, demons and dark mountains. I hope that by reflecting back to the audience their paranoid fantasies, which totally oversimplify the reality of Middle Eastern and death metal culture, that my work will get them to question their own prejudices and sense of the extreme."
Sounds cool, but why Egypt-loving death metal blasters Nile weren't included is beyond us. Let's give 'em some love.
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