I personally love a bit of shouting and banging, but I know heavy metal isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I get that. It sounds like a bag of nails being dropped on a baking tray. Why would anyone like it? But for some reason this gruesome cacophonous sound has crept all over the globe and is loved by millions. It turns up in every nook and cranny, and I recently found one of these crannies in Botswana, of all places.

It’s not the climate you would have expected to find head to toe leather, but these guys are willing to sweat for their art. 70% of Botswana is covered by the Kalahari desert and the Kalahari sun is no wimp, so these guys must be double hard, or double mental. The first Botswanan metal band – Metal Orizon – started in 1990 and are still going strong, apparently metal is still very much at the arse end of the under belly in Botswana but its popularity is steadily growing.

Bands like Skinflint and Overthrust (pictured below) have joined the fold in more recent years so these images are becoming slightly less rare as the metal glove slowly slides over the African fist. Metal Orizon’s drummer is quoted as saying “some say our music is just noise and some perceive us as violent people … but that has not dampened our spirits. We will continue to show our worth in society and to follow our hearts for the love of metal.” That seems to be a fairly common thing for metallers around the globe, the older generation thinks they are evil and violent and the younger generation thinks they look like dicks. That unfortunate combo means that the oldies shun you and the chavs beat you up. Gutted.

Whatever your personal prefs re metal are, you can still enjoy these excellently incongruent pictures below: