In the Western imagination, Madagascar is often reduced to a postcard, a distant island in bright colours. With YMAIMA: Watch out, it’s getting real!, LohArano take that postcard image into the streets, but not the streets people know from video games like Uncharted 4, where the Drake brothers lead a cinematic chase towards the pirate myth of Libertalia. No. LohArano keep our feet firmly on the ground, in the real streets, where we can feel the real fears explored in lyrics that fire off stories of disappearances, violence, exile, the black market in organs, and the kind of silence that allows all of this to happen in real life.
There are only three songs, and although the EP is short, it cannot be called small, with “Run or Die”, “Rodo”, and “Mpaka Taova” showing us true daily reality and not an adventure backdrop. It is eight and a half minutes of fear and history, where we hear about the dahalo, the thieves whose presence keeps civilians living in fear, and everything turns darker with the closing track, which addresses, without any romanticising, the organ dealers who kidnap children. All of this is half sung, half screamed in a euphoric female voice that, in Malagasy, mixes tradition with violent cries from those seeking justice.
Musically, it is easy to draw a comparison with early System of a Down. You can feel it in the way the songs move fast, switch gears and lean into that twitchy, stop and go energy. But that comparison, however strong and flattering, is also slightly unfair to LohArano. Their identity comes from a metal fusion built on Malagasy rhythmic DNA, where rock and heavy riffs collide with ternary grooves, punk bite, and flashes of rap like phrasing. This is how the band speaks, and instead of following a template, they shaped their themes within their own context, charging every song with authenticity. It also helps that the EP feels properly captured, recorded, mixed, and mastered, with a clarity that lets every sharp turn land without smearing the impact.
YMAIMA: Watch out, it’s getting real! tells three real stories that need to be heard out loud, managing to achieve precisely what heavy music should be, a way of telling the truth when silence becomes inert.
Watch the video for LohArano’s “Mpaka Taova (Organ Dealers)” below.
