Interview by Dayal Patterson from - Terrorizer Magazine

07/03/2007 (Interview from the Phex Era)

This is an interview with Muhannad Bursheh on Terrorizer Magazine especially made for Terrorizer's Middle Eastern Report Part II. The interview consists of 2 questions; one regarding Muhannad Bursheh's bands (Phex, Tyrant Throne and Augury) and the other regarding the Metal scene in Jordan. A big part of Muhannad's answers were featured on the Report. The interview was done in March 2007. Questions and Report by Dayal Patterson.

You can download the full original report from these links: Page 1 | Page 2

In your own words please give us a brief summary of your bands, ie. style, history, the band's aim, and any news on recent releases etc.
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TYRANT THRONE:
A Technical Brutal Death Metal band, created in 2004 by my cousin Zaher Siryani and myself. At first the band was called "Canopus" but the name later changed into "Tyrant Throne".

Since we're living in a non-metal supporting society, the idea of creating the band at the start was to do some brutally kick ass music and get attention from the outside to be able to sign a record deal or something. Work on the music for the band's first release started since the beginning; sick, upset, twisted, technical and brutal riffing, Hellish vocals and drumming is the spearhead of the band's music. The main ideas in the band's lyrics are based on ancient ones and mythology, philosophy, hate and rebellion against the poisoned society; that gave the band a more spiritual anger atmosphere.

Like most underground bands, the main and most important aim of the band is to be heard. We seek mostly for our music to spread and reach outside the borders of the Middle East and the Arabian World; this is definitely very hard to achieve without signing to a label, so basically we have a few labels in mind which we'll try to contact soon. A big problem that we're facing is that we still don't have a permanent drummer for the band, simply because we can't find a drummer in our area with the level of technicality that we seek, but all we can do is to keep searching before contacting any labels.

Our most recent and only release yet is "Abominations EP" which got released on the 14th of January 2007. This release brought a new level to the local Metal scene and proved to be a milestone in the history of Jordanian Metal. It is described as "One Fucking Masterpiece" according to JorZine's review of the EP and got a 10/10 rating.
The EP was recorded at the Sirenwave Studio (which is owned by Muhammad Masri), and was edited, mixed and produced by me at my personal home studio "The Phexagon Studio".

Line-up:
Phexataan (Muhannad Bursheh) - Bass & Vocals
Zaher Siryani - Guitars

For live shows, to be able to complete the line-up we use the help of some session members who vary from gig to gig, but I must mention Sirenwave (Muhammad Masri) who was always with us as a live guitarist until he left the country.

Releases:
Abominations (EP 2007)

Official Website: www.tyrantthrone.tk
Myspace Page: www.myspace.com/tyrantthrone

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AUGURY:
Started in September 2000 by myself (Phexataan), Saeed Abu-Jaber, Omar Nooreddin, Tareq Fayyad and Omar Ebdah. In the first 2 years the bands passed through many style changes, basically like any new band. In 2002 the Drummer Omar Ebdah left the band, during that period working on original material had already started and the band settled on some kind of Experimental Melodic Black Metal sound which had also obvious Heavy Metal and Progressive Metal touches. In 2003 my cousin Basil Bursheh joined the band as a permanent keyboardist, to add an atmospheric touch to the band.

In early 2004, Augury's first release; "Temptation of Oath" demo was released and gained a great reputation in the Jordanian, Arabian and Middle Eastern scenes due to the professionalism and quality of the music, and the band became a significant and important factor in the area. Temptation of Oath can be considered as the first professional Metal material and production in Jordan (Recorded and produced at the Sirenwave Studio), and it came at a time when the local scene was dead for about 3 years because of trouble with the authorities, so basically Augury gave a big electrical current to the scene and it started rising again. The demo also reached a good number of countries other than the Middle East and Arabia; Europe, the Americas...

The following year, the band stepped a further step when Temptation of Oath was released in a split album with the Belgian Folk Black Metal band "Natan". The split album was released by the Mexican underground label "Atolinga Records" and it is now selling world wide. By that Augury became the first ever Jordanian metal band to release an official release with a foreign metal label.

Currently and unfortunately, the band is passing through a very hard period. Since the guitarists Omar Nooreddin and Saeed Abu-Jaber moved to England in 2004, the band has been moving slowly and only did a few shows and composed little material in the past 3 years. The biggest strike to the band was the immigration of the vocalist Tareq Fayyad to the USA, which made things even worse. The current situation of Augury is on hold until the near future decides what will happen!

Line-up:
Tareq Fayyad - Vocals
Phexataan - Bass & Backing Vocals
Omar Nooreddin - Guitars
Saeed Abu-Jaber - Guitars
Basil Bursheh - Keyboards
Sirenwave - Session/Live Drums

Releases:
Temptation of Oath (Demo 2004)
Augury/Natan (Split 2005)

Official Website: www.augury.tk
Myspace Page: www.myspace.com/augurymusic

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PHEX:
My free one-man band. It started in 2001 as a side project for Augury where I can put my 100% personal ideas.

There is no specific style for this project, its definitely Extreme Metal, but I can't really categorize it in any genre, each release has a different sound. The first ever musical work as Phex was actually Electronic Music; "Experiments 00-01 (2001)" a demo tape which was never added to the Phex discography until 2006 when I decided that it will make no harm to add it. Second and third demos "The Black Vision (2002)" and "Spirits and Devils (2003)" had some kind of Doom/Industrial/Death mix! First full-length album "Transfixion (2005)" is musically close to Death Metal, but its not really Death Metal, so I just call it Extreme Metal with Ambient touches. Next album is intended to be Black Metal.

To talk more about Transfixion album; 9 tracks out of 10 (such as Spirits and Devils, Llama's Odyssey, The Insect War, Watching Your Death, ...) are re-recorded versions of songs that appeared on "Spirits and Devils" and "The Black Vision" Demos, and the 10th track "Powder Burns" is a tribute song for the legendary Death Metallers "Bolt Thrower". Like Tyrant Throne's "Abominations (EP 2007)" and Augury's "Temptation of Oath (Demo 2004)", Transfixion brought a shock to the Arabian scene due to the musical material and the professional sound production work. The Album was recorded, mixed and produced at the Sirenwave Studio. Transfixion featured some guests on some tracks; Sirenwave played 2 crazy solos on the song "Watching Your Death" and Zaher Siryani Machine gun guitarist of Tyrant Throne played another solo on the same track. Basil Bursheh keyboardist of Augury played keyboards on the instrumental track "Fires of Demise".

Although Phex is a one-man project, that doesn't mean that it is only a studio project. Phex performed 2 live gigs in 2006, with the help of session live members to complete the line-up of course.

Main aim is to sign with a reasonable record label for the time being to be able to distribute my music safely, and hopefully things will start happening in a bigger form in the future. One thing is for sure, Phex will always be a one-man band, and will always remain totally EXTREME.

Line-up:
Phexataan (Muhannad Bursheh) - Guitars/Bass/Vocals/Programming

Releases:
Experiments 00-01 (Demo 2001)
The Black Vision (Demo 2002)
Spirits and Devils (Demo 2003)
Transfixion (Album 2005)

Official Website: www.phex.tk
Myspace Page: www.myspace.com/phexmusic

How is the metal scene where you are and what difficulties have you had, for example with Laws, playing live etc etc.
Sadly the Metal scene in Jordan isn't really good, due to many problems. Starting from the people themselves then going to authorities and laws. First of all there are many Metalheads in Jordan, but at the same time there are loads and loads of wannabes and posers. The majority of fans here do not really appreciate the hard work of good bands, infact they only support their friend's bands or what so ever. Many people do not really look at real talent, they cheer for "showing off" talents! There is a lot of envy and jealousy instead of support, I really don't know why, so in a way you'll find successful and talented bands hated, while sucky and showing off bands loved, yea that happens a lot!!! I don't really know if all Metal scenes around the world face such problems.

Going to one of the biggest problems; THERE ISN'T MUCH SUPPORT FOR MUSICIAN'S AND BANDS. We have a very major lack in support; since the beginnings of the Jordanian scene in the late 80's, a local label was only created last year; MUTE RECORDS, which I guess the name will change into "JORDAN RIVER" in the future because Mute Records is already a name for an international label. Some people tried to do websites and forums, but too bad they weren't professional enough to do proper promotion for bands and stuff, so they eventually where locked or what so ever. Only one website is really doing a great Job "JorZine" (www.jorzine.com). Its a relatively new webzine which was created in early 2006 as I can recall, these guys are actually doing their best to improve the scene and they're doing more and more stuff every year, most importantly taking management of some big names in the scene like Bilocate and Tyrant Throne.

Talking about problems with authorities and laws, that is actually a very old thing in Jordan, and I guess its a problem in other countries in the area as well. The biggest problem is that the society here takes us as Satanists and Devil Worshippers instead of recognizing us as musicians, so many people gets questioned by the police from time to time about being related to Satanism and shit. the biggest cases happened in 1997 and 2002, where many Metalheads where thrown in prison, and we started reading silly articles in news papers about Metal and Metal gigs, of course there were many stupid media lies just to get the society to hate Metal, for example: group sex in gigs, strange rituals meaning head banging and stage diving,... hehe yeah stuff like that. A big gap happened between 2002 and 2004 where the Metal scene was totally dead. Strangely enough in 2005, it looks like the authorities understood that its not really about being Satanic, so the rate of problems with police dropped a lot.

Also one of the biggest problems is shortage of money for bands and general financial state. Bands do not have money to record their music, bands do not have money to print and release their music. Concert organizers do not have a good financial balance to do large gigs, or to get a descent sound system or stage at least.

There are no professional Metal recording studios or engineers to produce pro quality sound. Although my bands Tyrant Throne, Augury, and Phex all released CDs with professional sound production, but that's all because of our extremely hard work and personal experience and long years of experimenting in recording. First great step was done by our friend Sirenwave who made a home studio and started the "Good Recording Quality Revolution" in Jordan, but he left last year to the USA, so am now continuing his job; I've built a personal home studio "The Phexagon", and its going to be officially opened soon for bands to record with very cheap prices as a way to support.

There are a lot of talent in Jordan, but it needs to be supported and am sure it will kick out brightly, there are some hard working bands who deserve to be recognized, such as Bilocate and others. Wish them all the luck!