Guitars, masks and defiance: Kenya’s rock and metal scene catches fire
After years in the wilderness, Kenyan bands like Irony Destroyed, Last Year’s Tragedy and Rash are clawing their way up the charts.

By Rael Ombuor and Ed Ram
NAIROBI — The guitar thrummed, the drumsticks smashed into a quivering cymbal, and the lead vocalist for Rash howled into the mic, electrifying the night air.

After years in the wilderness, Kenya’s tiny rock and metal scene is exploding — and bands like Irony Destroyed, Last Year’s Tragedy and Rash are clawing their way up the charts.

Very few Africans have traditionally listened to rock music, said Nick Wathi, one of Kenya’s first rock producers. Its reputation for rebelliousness and subversion creates suspicion in a society that values religion and respect for elders, Wathi said. But that’s what drew him in.

“It was the devil’s music!” he laughed.

Samuel Gakungu, Rash’s drummer, has his musical roots in a church choir. He came to rock, he said, because it spoke to him more deeply.

“There was no structure, there was no right way or wrong way to do things, I just had to be me, without any judgment,” said the 31-year-old car dealer. He met the other four band members through a friend 11 years ago, creating hits like “Darkness and Witchcraft” and “Do or Die” — attracting a fan base of restless young urbanites increasingly furious with authority.

In a few hours, they would be taking the stage at Nairobi’s premier rock and metal festival: Undertow.

Rock in Kenya has had an uneven ride.

A decade ago, bands would sometimes show up for gigs that had been canceled without their knowledge. Audiences were tiny. The closure of Kenya’s only rock radio station, XFM, in 2019 and the arrival of covid in 2020 nearly smothered the scene altogether.

The first Undertow concert in April 2022 rescued bands on the brink of collapse by providing a dependable gig and venue. Now a well-established quarterly event held in Nairobi’s upscale Westlands District — its neon-nightclub-lined promenade nicknamed Electric Avenue — the concert has featured most of Kenya’s 16 commercial rock bands, said Wathi.

The musicians still have day jobs. Irony Destroyed, a metalcore group with pugnacious lyrics and reverberating bass, is composed of a lawyer, a writer and a product manager for a fintech company. The howling, thrashing sounds of Last Year’s Tragedy are generated by an advertising strategist, a product designer, a logistics manager and a journalist.

Practice time is scarce and precious. In a last-minute rehearsal in the lead-up to Undertow, Last Year’s Tragedy’s vocalist David “Madman” Mburu paced across a tiny floor writhing with cables, crowding pianist Rono Kipkulei and nearly knocking over bass guitarist Mahia Mutua. A copy of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” muffled the drum set as they thrashed out “Of Villains and Heroes” from their first record, released last year.

Irony Destroyed, meanwhile, had to scramble to replace drummer Cyrus Kamau after he dislocated his arm in a motorbike accident just a week before the concert. Kamau, only able to use one hand, had to train his replacement, Larry Kim, after they both finished work.

“Start with a little ascent, tone it down and build it up again,” he advised Kim. They practiced until midnight, when police prowled the empty streets and the last vibrations rolled over the lone tea seller still in the alley outside.

Some bands have made it onto streaming platforms like Spotify, which hasn’t brought in much cash but has broadened their reach. Last Year’s Tragedy’s song “47” has become an anthem among Kenyan youths, with its lyrics raging against the country’s politicians.

“These so-called leaders/ Who sit on their ivory towers/ (These never-ending cycles)/ Stealing and killing,” raged the band. “We will watch them all/Burn!”

Anne Mwaura, 29, is the host of Capital FM’s rock show “The Fuse,” which now gets around 3 million online listeners every month. She has hosted the show since its inception and remembers when it used to be the same handful of bands all the time. Now, she says, the scene is much more diverse, with all-female bands and Christian rock groups breaking onto the airwaves.

“It’s really a genre for everyone,” she said.

When the radio station once considered axing the show, she said, enough people wrote in to persuade the managers to keep it on air.

Undertow’s ticket prices mean the audience is mostly middle-class. An advance ticket goes for around 1,000 Kenyan shillings (a little under $8), and it’s a bit more at the door. That’s more than two days’ wages for most people.

About 200 men and women, some with thickly mascaraed eyes and studded collars, head-banged in a mosh pit. A tarot reader read palms on the balcony, and a cloud of cigarette smoke enveloped the barman as he sloshed beers to the crowd.

Regulars Margaret Nekesa, 29, and husband Dennis Mwangi, 33, met because Mwangi had a home studio, and they had both been in local bands. Now they have a 1-year-old son — home that night with a sitter — but they still compose and play music. They’re seven songs into an album, Nekesa yelled over the music.

“I come from a very, very strict family, a military family … you had to dress in a certain way, you had to appear in a certain way,” she said. “There was no space for exploration or discovery of self, so rock music gave me all that I missed.”

She was drowned out as Irony Destroyed stormed onto the stage. Masked musicians belted out their single “Najiskia Kuua Tena,” which translates to “I feel like killing again.”

A bloodred liquid oozed from the mouth of Preston “Riot” Mado, Irony Destroyed’s guest vocalist, as they broke into the crowd’s favorite hit, “Scholar of First Sin.”

Later, Rash belted out a rendition of the Cranberries’ song “Zombie” — a scream against the brutality of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, the decades in which British security forces battled Irish paramilitaries and civilians were caught in the crossfire.

The lyrics resonate in Nairobi, where young demonstrators have been shot, kidnapped and teargassed as they protest government corruption and police violence. The protests saw parliament set aflame and the bodies of slain college students wrapped up in Kenyan flags, fished from dams or carried through the capital before banks of television cameras.

"But you see, it’s not me, it’s not my family/ In your head, in your head, they are fightin’,” the crowd screamed along with the band. “With their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns/ In your head, in your head, they are cryin’."

This is real good.