Alfi Hayati: Egypt’s Godfather

Honestly, no, but I liked how it affected people. It was never about the songs, it was always about the vibe and freshness it leaves in people's spirit.

Well, it came to me in two steps. First, as a kid I was fond of the Rocky movie series, so the first tape I ever got was its soundtrack for part III. It was the first time I heard guitars, bass, and real live drumming and it moved me a lot. Listening to those guitar solos was just what I felt is missing in our surrounding traditional music, so i stuck to this tape for a long time till a friend of mine got me a "Best Of Metallica” tape when I was 11 years old .. and that was it .. that's what I wanted to listen to for the rest of my life.

When I watched "Metallica's San Diego Live Shit" ... from that moment I wanted to play an instrument. The way those guys played on stage, it was breathtaking for me; it's as if they rule the whole world while playing on stage. At first I chose to play bass guitar, then over time I couldn't stop myself from learning how to get all that distorted noise from a rhythm guitar!

Well, during the early and mid 90's, for someone my age there were two and only two ways to reach Western instruments: to ask a friend who's coming from abroad to bring you one or to go to cheap stupid music stores that offered very limited choices of instruments without supplying any information about them. You have to remember that the internet wasn't that popular here in Egypt so you had to dig and dig deep yourself.

Yea, it was tougher to meet people to not only play music, but kinda close taste to yours. I first met them in the very first few weeks of college; we knew each other from the black t-shirts with band logos on them. It was nice to meet them and talk about metal and bands; there it started when I first met a guy who was looking for others to jam with .. and then it all started. I was 17 years old when i arranged the first Metal gig in Alexandria, not rock, just metal. We payed for everything. The sound, the stage, everything. We just wanted people to come and bang their heads with us .. and enjoy this music as loud as we all could.

Well, at first it was amazing. It all began with real metal heads that could get the energy and the vibe of what were were doing. Then two things just fucked everything up: business and internet. People who never knew, and still dunno anything about metal or music, started to arrange those gigs to get money .. and it was easy you know. Get 10 bands and 6 of them are off-tuning and that fucks it all up. Then the internet came and some kids just thought it was cool to wear black like those people and listen to their music, “they look cool huh.” It was all fucked up for awhile, but honestly speaking, during the last 3 or 4 years I recognized some bands that really want to play music. Music for music, not music for business and I think the whole scene is getting a little better than it has been in the last few years.

Well, for me, playing live is much more fun than recording and promoting albums. I want to take all my feelings and notes .. and throw it all at people, people who are craving for energy. I wanna tour the world and share every note with everyone who can possibly feel and love this music.

Many people still have this perspective that metal music and musicians are satanic, violent and weird. It's not as bad as before for sure, but sure thing this ain't a cool atmosphere for playing this music. It's like swimming against the current; you must be strong enough to continue or just get bored of whatever people think of your music and how they relate it to stupid stereotypes that they really want to believe to be true.

I joined Odious 10 years ago. I was a friend to the band and I played bass guitar with Odious' vocalist, Basem, in another band called Midnight Symphony; so when our ex-bassist left the band because he continued his education outside Egypt, I was the closest family member for this job. We started by playing doom metal songs, our originals and a few covers for the bands who inspired us. After some time we felt that we needed more energy as an output to our music.

Early Moonspell albums and Tiamat!

Basem (vocals and keyboardist) wrote the lyrics. We never heard Arabic singers or bands, it was all in the background. Arabic music is the thing that we owe the inspiration, but since we were young we used to listen to English-singing bands so it was/is easier for us.

All the old Arabic music with oriental instruments. Not a specific artist. It was the surrounding music that your friends listen to and that you hear in public places, transportation. It was always in the background and it really inspired us without us even noticing. The idea of playing oriental music came when we once tried an oud and tabla on some of our music. We were really amazed by the purity of the creativity that can come out of the main influence, which is metal, mixed with our musical atmosphere in the background of our lives .. so it was all us and we are proud of it.

We're recording our 2nd full length album, SKIN AGE. During the first weeks of the revolution it was impossible to gather or to even talk about the music, but it's better now.

Hate Field is a totally different story. It was the outcome of a huge mess in my life after the break-up of a long relationship. I had lots of negative energy. Loads of feelings and emotions and I had to get it out or explode so I chose to capture it all in music. I wanted to be totally free to get out all that I felt. I recorded all the music, all the vocals and lyrics, and I'm really satisfied with it. I'm expecting good feedback from Hate Field.

I'm working hard to release it as a CD distributed by an European record label. That's what I'm working on right now while doing the mastering process.

I'd label it as an industrial heavy metal band.

As much? No, but aside from music I like soccer and fishing a lot.

You are more than welcome. I hope everything will go fine with Odious and Hate Field. We're working on a mini-European tour for 2012 hopefully. Thanks for the support.