Here’s the idea: every week I’m picking five tracks from Africa that I couldn’t stop playing. They can be brand new, they can be 15 years old, they can be anything in between. This isn’t a chart, it isn’t a ranking, and it isn’t me pretending to be objective. It’s one person’s taste, quirks included, writing down the five African songs that owned the week.
There’s no fixed order either. I’m writing them the way they came back to me.
You’ll find all five in the official AFRICA.ROCKS Spotify playlist. Save it to your favourites, because I keep it updated constantly.
Megalodon “Sanctum”
(Illusion of Origin / Burning Tone Records, 2017)
Who needs Meshuggah when we’ve got Megalodon? Okay. We need Meshuggah too. I’m joking, and I’m not saying it with any disrespect to a European band that helped shape a whole language. I’m saying it because Africa has a real ecosystem. It’s diverse, and it’s already producing bands that can go toe-to-toe with the best stuff coming out anywhere.
“Sanctum”, pulled from 2017’s Illusion of Origin, is technical metal with groove and a djent pulse that never stops tightening the screws. There’s that prehistoric Megalodon image hanging over it too. The animal that once haunted the South African coast, the idea of something huge moving under the surface. This track does the same thing. It keeps feeding you dread until the guitar solo arrives and flips the emotion on its head. It’s aggressive, the vocals are feral, and then you get this melodic lift that’s beautiful as hell. It breathes at the right time. It turns the song into something bigger than the monster.
Production-wise, South Africa often benefits from conditions that simply make it easier to sound big. More studios that specialise in heavy music. More engineers who’ve mixed this kind of material for years. More gear in circulation. More regular live opportunities that force bands to tighten their performance and their sound. You hear that in “Sanctum”. Everything hits hard, and nothing feels accidental.
Severance feat. GOATBOi “The End of Impediment”
(Single / Osmium Sonics PTY LTD, 2026)
The first thing I thought of when I heard Severance’s debut single was IGORRR. And look, I know comparisons can be annoying. Some artists love them, some artists hate them. I’m saying it because if you know that French genius who’s had tractors crushing pianos for sound and still finds room for chickens, you already know the kind of left-field you’re walking into.
This track throws a lot at you. Rapid-fire drums that move like a machine. Choirs. Screams that sound ripped from the throat. Little 8-bit flashes. Strings. Technical metal turns. Melodic choruses. Breakdown punches. A thread that keeps it all connected while your brain scrambles to catch up. The one thing IGORRR is missing is GOATBOi. I mean that literally. Anthony Hawkins pulled him in as a guest vocalist here, and GOATBOi comes across like a born performer. The kind of alchemist artist I’d bet could turn shit into gold if you gave him a microphone and a bad idea.
Cistamatic “Gutter”
(Fear Is The Weapon / Goblin City, 2025)
This song has moved into my head rent-free. My biggest fear is getting older and going senile to the point where I forget that Fear Is The Weapon, the latest record from this South African trio, was one of the best sonic gifts I’ve ever been handed.
“Gutter” is simple in structure, but simple does not mean empty. It doesn’t mean easy. Everything in this track works. It makes me shake. It makes me hum it without noticing. That album got the first 5/5 on AFRICA.ROCKS for a reason. You’ve got three musicians perfectly in sync. A bass that knows how to drive the song, drums that give it body and muscle, and a brain splitting vocal and guitar duties in a way that feels like the best of the 90s taught us.
Nawather “Falleg”
(Kenz Illusion / M & O Music, 2021)
I’ve been following Tunisia’s Nawather since their debut Wasted Years in 2016. That was the year my daughter was born, and I also put out my first physical magazine, Ultraje, covering the global rock and metal world with the Portuguese market in mind. I’ve carried Nawather with me since then. The only negative thing I’ve got to say is the wait. Five years between albums is brutal when you want more from a band like this. Kenz Illusion came out in 2021. It’s 2026 now. Do the maths. I’m still hoping they’ve got a surprise lined up.
“Falleg” comes from Kenz Illusion. They’re a sextet with two women in the lineup. Ryma Nakkach shares vocal duties with Wajdi Manai, and that interplay gives the songs an extra dimension. Chaima Bida brings the qanun into the mix, with that bright, ringing, almost hypnotic plucked sound that can feel melodic and percussive at the same time. The result is progressive metal with Middle Eastern folk influence woven in properly. A band that knows exactly what it’s doing, and why it belongs in any conversation about the best metal coming out of Africa.
Znous “Sidi Arbi”
(Znousland 2 / Anti-Ta7na Records, 2020)
One of the biggest challenges with AFRICA.ROCKS is lyrics. Africa doesn’t hand you one language. It hands you a continent of them. I’m perfectly comfortable in English and Portuguese, my native language, shared with Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Arabic is where it gets tricky. I don’t speak it, and I don’t always know whether a lyric carries something that clashes with what AFRICA.ROCKS stands for.
With Tunisia’s Znous, that barrier drops because they’ve done the work. Their official site includes translations and footnotes that place the lyrics in context, and they don’t just translate words. They situate the social, political, and cultural reality behind them, inside the post-revolution Tunisia they live in. Znous were even banned from Instagram for standing by their truth. They’ve also got women in the lineup, and they’re masters at pulling Middle Eastern elements into heavy music in a way that feels native to the band. The discography is already solid too: three EPs, two full-lengths, and a run of singles that keeps the whole thing moving.
I once read someone saying Morocco and Tunisia are an “oasis” next to Algeria and Libya. I get the impulse, but it’s too neat. Algeria and Libya have carried heavier burdens of instability and conflict for years, and that changes what daily life looks like, including what space there is for culture to breathe. The world runs on conflict, power hunger, and social injustice. For better and worse, that pressure produces some of the sharpest art. Znous are proof of that, and “Sidi Arbi” hits like a band that refuses to soften the message.
