Hi everyone. I just registered for the site and upon reading the guidelines and FAQ stuff I came acoss a statement that said "(exceptions are made for those of you who live in backward countries where heavy metal is against the law; we will gladly help you make the information more anonymous if necessary)".

I have tried such google searches as: heavy metal illegal, where is heavy metal illegal and other similar keywords but am failing to come up with the type of information I'm looking for.

Wondering if anyone could give me a few examples of countries where this is the case or point me somewhere I could get some more information or research on this with subject with information such as the reasoning behind the bans and when it took effect and stuff like that?

Malaysia is well known for this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1473198.stm

Iran is also known for this, especially with Black Metal bands, though Iranian black metal bands don't get accepted easly on the archives.

Watch the movie "Global Metal"

It has a lot of information about the subject. It is from the same director of "Metal: A Headsbangers Journey"

Due to an obscure law passed in 1971, heavy metal music is actually illegal in Canada, though no one has ever been prosecuted for it. You should know though that the appropriate authorities could, in theory, arrest you for being on this very website.

Hopefully they'll arrest Cryptopsy so they never make music again.

tell me more!!!

Global Metal seconded. It mentions a lot about how life as a metalhead is in those countries.

Source? A cursory search on Google brings me back to this thread, and your post in particular...

In some arabic countries, people (might) get arrested for "being satanists".

Yeah, any Islamic theocratic dictatorship probably frowns upon heavy metal. I'm sure heavy metal was illegal in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Which "obscure law" is that? I haven't been able to find anything about it...

I just checked out the Global Metal trailor and that seems a really good starting point. Now I'm also really interested in finding out about that Canada law too. Thanks for all the replies.

Well that's a ridiculous law to be passed. To think my very own country may have outlawed heavy metal.

There was no heavy metal in Afghanistan. Hell, they'd be extremely lucky if they could smuggle any Beatles or ABBA into the country. Music was forbidden under the Taliban's rule.

If I'm not mistaken, every form of "art" was illegal back then, not only metal music.

As I've said, it's a rather obscure law that has seen no actual use in Canadian legal proceedings, so it's not surprising that Google wouldn't have it.

I think that the Taliban would have permitted forms of Islamic art, such as architecture, calligraphy (Islamic calligraphy is absolutely amazing), ceramics, geometric patterns and such - accepted forms of art that did not constitute some form of sin, or distract people from practicing and gaining knowledge of Islam. Correct me if I'm wrong though. In any case, music would definitely get heads rolling.

OK, but, may I ask, how do you know about it? I'm curious because that's so ridiculous, if true, it definitely warrants some explanation and proof.

Yes that's quite an amazing way to live, Islam is everything in your life and anything else is banned. Those fuckers deserved to be invaded regardless of 9/11. As for the heavy metal law in Canada, I'd be interested to know about that as well, obscure as it may be. Where'd you hear about it?

Bob Tarantino's 'Under Arrest: Canadian Laws You Won't Believe'.

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Arrest-Cana ... 1550027034

It sources some chapter of the Canadian penal code for it with a bunch of letters and numbers I can't remember. I remember that the punishment was different for distributing versus owning/listening. Distributing was punishable by up to five years per item (tape/CD/vinyl record/shirt/zine/etc.), just owning was less. Performing it live, oddly enough, was legal.

Just to follow up on this, here's some information I received from a metalhead who lives in Malaysia:

"It's fine to wear metal band t-shirts as long as there is no desecration shown. However, if you go to West Malaysia, be careful as most of the people there are Muslims and might see you from a negative perspective even if your t-shirts do not show any sign of blasphemy. If you go to East Malaysia, there won't be much people complaining due to the majority here are pagans,Hindus,Buddhist and Christians. For some reason, the Christians here don't seem to care about anything satanic here."

"It's fine to wear metal t-shirts here as long as there is no desecration of any sort."

Well, that's interesting. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have stopped Canada from producing some pretty kick-ass metal.

I'm making it up.

Seriously, guys. An obscure law passed in 1971 that criminalises heavy metal music in Canada?

I should have known better.

Noktorn has just proven, in a very elegant manner, that people are indeed stupid enough to believe anything as long as you sound like you know what you're talking about.

Y'all've disappointed me.

Look, stranger things have happened. Coming from the States, there was a time when assholes in Congress nearly banned Metal not too long ago...

However, if I'd remembered that Septic Tomb is Noktorn, I never would have listened to him about anything.