Death themes on Friday the 13th Paris concert

It was Friday the 13th and the Bataclan, a concert hall in Paris’s 11th district, was offering French audience a night of death metal music courtesy of the American band, Eagles of Death Metal (EODM).

As someone who grew up with The Beatles playing endlessly on AM radio, I needed to brush up on heavy metal music from which the death metal genre was supposed to have been born. Wikipedia said the extreme subgenre of the heavy metal later on became a specific heavy metal genre called death metal.

The lyrics of death metal music call upon dark themes, according to web sources: “slasher film-stylized violence, religion (sometimes Satanism), occultism, nature, mysticism, mythology, science fiction; they may describe extreme acts including mutilation, dissection, torture, rape, cannibalism and necrophilia.”

Such extreme themes do not attract mainstream audience, making the death metal music scene largely an “underground” act. Still, the EODM was able to attract a major label (Universal) to publish and distribute four albums, illustrating that the death metal audience is increasing. Record companies tie up with producers and artists to mount concerts in order to attract bigger audiences, and I think the choice of the trendy Bataclan and Friday the 13th as the day to rock with the Eagles of Death Metal may have been quite a seduction for death metal lovers.

The California-based rock band was playing to a sold-out house when the terrorist attacks happened. More than 120 people perished and 350 more have been badly injured in one of the most horrific terror attacks against France in decades. The figures can be misleading because the whole of France and Europe has been traumatized by the deadly attacks.

There are no words to describe the atrocity perpetrated by the terrorist group formally known as the Islamic State of the Iraq and the Levant or ISIL. Practically the whole world and even Arab countries are standing with France in condemning the perpetrators and their murderous ideology. French President Francois Hollande has vowed to wage a “merciless war” against the ISIL, who has claimed responsibility for the Friday night attacks.

The ISIL attacks were in response to the role of the French government in efforts to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who indicated that French support for opposition forces in his country’s five-year old civil war has led to the ISIL-claimed attacks in the French capital. France is part of the US-led coalition (composed of UK, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, and Poland) that backs Syrian rebel groups in airstrikes against ISIL strongholds in Eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

President Hollande had gone the extra mile by hosting the “International Conference on Peace and Security in Iraq” in September last year. In that meeting, Hollande skillfully cobbled a coalition that placed France in the front seat against the ISIL. Together with 26 other countries supporting the Iraqi government with military assistance in its fight against the ISIL, the French-led coalition reaffirmed commitments to an earlier UN Security Council Resolution “condemning all trade with ISIL and urging all financial donations and all payments of ransom to ISIL”.

It is no longer a secret that under President Hollande, France has taken a very aggressive role in putting pressure on the ISIL. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who takes pride in being “anti-Israel” and “anti-West”, is accused of having links with terror groups. France is asking President al-Assad to step down as a way of toning down the influence of ISIL, if not ending the Syrian war altogether. Al-Assad is adamant and has found influential allies in Russia and Iran.

After last Friday’s murderous rampage by the ISIL, the fear of spillover attacks has gripped the Western world and prompted world leaders to convene in Vienna on Saturday, November 14, to find ways on how to end the Syrian conflict.

Meeting as the International Support Syria Group or ISSG, the Arab League, China, Egypt, the European Union, France, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States and the United Nations discussed how “to accelerate an end to the Syrian conflict”.

The meeting paved the way for a United Nations-led cease fire agreement in Syria, but with the French leader vowing to wage a merciless war against the ISIL, the ISSG noted that the members are “committed to ensure a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition.”

This is certainly not a good time to quibble on the ISSG initiative, whether or not the group has the influence to remove or even neutralize Syrian President al-Assad and his supporters in the ISIL. But because violence cannot be resolved by bouts of more violence, peoples around the world should rally behind the UN-led course of action.