Blaakyum on Europe tour with Onslaught

Click on poster to enlarge

Ever since we discovered Onslaught, this cult Thrash band has been an inspiration for Blaakyum. So imagine our thrill that the bulk of our second album “Line of Fear” tour will be to accompany no other than Onslaught on their tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their iconic album “The Force”!

We will be on the road with Onslaught as well as the amazing Mors Principium Est from Finland and NO RETURN from France for 16 days this autumn. Yes, 16 shows in 16 days in 8 countries, driving over 5000km as Thrash Mercenaries all over Europe!

The Thrash Mercenaries / The Full Force tour will take us back to familiar grounds like Progresja and Randal club where we performed on our first album tour in 2012, and many other awesome venues in Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Slovakia, Belgium, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Check out the full list here and see you on the road!

THRASH MERCENARIES TOUR 2016 / THE FULL FORCE
ONSLAUGHT (UK) + MORS PRINCIPIUM EST (FIN) + NO RETURN (FR) + BLAAKYUM (LB)

16/09 - Hasselt (BE) / Muziekodroom
17/09 - Oberhausen (DE) / Helvete
18/09 - Rotterdam (NL) / Baroeg
19/09 - Roeselare (BE) / De Verlichte geest
20/09 - Weinheim (DE) / Cafe central
21/09 - Hamburg (DE) - Bambi Galore
22/09 - Copenhagen (DK) / KB18
23/09 - Gdańsk (PL) / B90
24/09 - Szczecin (PL) / Słowianin
25/09 - Warsaw (PL) / Progresja
26/09 - Košice (SK) / Collosseum
27/09 - Wien (AT) / Viper room
28/09 - Graz (AT) / Explosiv
29/09 - Bratislava (SK) / Randal club
30/09 - Praha (CZ) / Modrá Vopice
01/10 - Dresden (DE) / Skullcrusher

Stay tuned for more “Line of Fear” tour dates!

Lebanese Metal in Wacken 4/5

The Pilgrimage: this is a short 14 minutes clip capturing our moments during our pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Wacken Open Air Festival... we hope you enjoy it.

Blaakyum performing live on the 6th of February 2016

We've been Busy

Greetings friends and fans, supporters and haters, it has been a while since we updated you on what is going on.

Basically we have a lot going on and barely had time to leak anything out, well... of course other than that you guys know we've been to Italy and recorded our second album at the amazing Dyne Engine Studios, with the very talented Manuele Pesaresi... While Manuele is busying himself with the mixing of the album, we have been working on few stuff ourselves, we performed in the lovely Christmas Mission for the 4th time and we had a good time with our friends in supporting children in need, we are preparing few short footages to share with you about our trip to Wacken and then our little studio experience, and while the album is being mixed we have been doing small tweaking of our own.
As well Rock Ring released a live performance video of our song Baal Adon... All band members agreed that had we seen this video before recording the song we would have definitely made it as fast as we play it live.... hope you enjoy it

A message from our Management to our fans and Canal +

To all our fans who were looking forward to seeing our Canal Plus interview on November 22 during the program "L'effet papillon": We are as disappointed as you are by Canal Plus' lack of professionalism. Few days ago we were interviewed by Canal Plus television for a story on Lebanese musicians supporting others in light of the Paris attacks. On Sunday we were surprised to find out that we were omitted from the final cut of "L'effet papillon" without having been informed in advance about this omission. Of course, this is television, and these things happen. However:

1. Both BandAge (who were also interviewed) and ourselves had over the past few days publicised the piece on Facebook and Twitter and told all our fans to watch it so there was plenty of time for Canal Plus to inform us about the final cut.

2. Being the oldest established Metal band in Lebanon, and a pioneer whose struggle helped pave the way for other musicians in the country, and above all else, a band well known for its deep committment to social and political causes, we want our voice to be heard, especially at this critical time that we live in. It is important to show that the Metal scene in Lebanon, and not just the rock and mainstream music scene, is outraged by the Paris and Beirut attacks and that we all stand united against all forms of terrorism wherever it occurs.

It seems that mainstream television remains biased against Metal, because "L'effet papillon" gave plenty of time to bands from other genres but skipped Metal altogether. We are deeply disappointed with Canal Plus' lack of professionalism. We wrote to the reporter who interviewed us relaying this feedback and she did not even have the courtesy to reply. We know that she instead wrote to our friends from BandAge (who we are very happy to see featured in the segment) giving the lame excuse that there was "no time" in the report for Metal.

Our message remains the same despite Canal Plus' wasting of our time. As Blaakyum's founder and frontman Bassem Deaibess told the Canal Plus reporter in the interview that never aired, "in Metal we talk about death and terror all the time", so terrorist attacks "don't and won't scare us, if anything they make us angrier and more determined to fight back." And fight back we shall \m/

-Blaakyum Management

Lebanese Metal in Wacken 3/5

At times we are angry... all the time we are angry, angry at a rotten ignorant society, that has demonised  anything and everything that doesn't look or sound like it... We the Metal fans, have been outcast for too long, and slowly slowly we are doing our comeback, if this society fear us, after many times trying to show them that we are just a normal part of society even if we look or behave differently, they still fear us, so be it, now we will want to scare them, since we can't talk sense to them, we will scare the fuck out of their idiotic asses... This is the WICKED REVELATION \m/

Interview with BLAAKYUM at Wacken Open Air 2015 by www.apesmetal.com

Lebanese Metal in Wacken 2/5

From the ancient Levantine lands of Canaan and Pheonicia comes God of the Rain, Melkart, also known as Baal or Adon... This is Baal-Adon

Blaakyum Featured on Local News TV Station

Blaakyum was featured on Future TV News broadcast on the 15th of August 2015 on both the afternoon and the night news.

Lebanese Metal in Wacken Open Air.. 1/5

We have already posted our musical intro of our set at Wacken on our Facebook page. Now we will start a series of videos about our Wacken experience, the first ones will be videos of our actual shows.

Hope you enjoy, and may the Middle Eastern and Levantine Metal invasion begins \m/

Meet us at Wacken Open Air Festival

See you in the Holy Land of Metal \m/

Blaakyum releases its new Secret Society logo... JOIN THE CULT \m/

DISCLAIMER: The title above is presented as such, in the hope that it will catch the attention of Mr. Joe Maalouf or any of his breed of Pseudojournalists (who are overpopulating Lebanon) and in doing so we hope this will get us some free publicity ;)


On a more serious note, Blaakyum is delighted to present to you its new logo and emblem, creation of the genius designer Mr. Ali Samhoun... The New Metal Order has begun \m/

Click on picture to enlarge

The Pilgrimage of Blaakyum in 30 days

Only one month to go before Blaakyum becomes set on its pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Metal: Wacken Open Air 2015, the world’s biggest Heavy Metal festival, now in its 26^th year!!! This year’s line-up features giants such as Dark Tranquility, At The Gates, Black Label Society, Annihilator, Death Angel just to name few. Check the festival website and the awesome 140 bands performing there here.

We are proud and honoured to be the first ever band to represent the entire Middle East in the W: O: A: Metal Battle. We will be performing at the battle on Wednesday July 29 at 12:40pm at the W:E:T: stage.  Join us in making history at Wacken and showing that a Metal scene can exist strong and hard in the Middle East!

We Shall Rise \m/

The Eastern Man Marches Into The Holy Land of Wacken

The Gods of Heavy Metal had it that Blaakyum will represent the Middle East in the Wacken Open Air Festival Metal Battle. For the first time, Blaakyum will officially represent the Middle East. We had already done that back in 2007 when we were the only Middle East band in the Global Battle Of the Bands (GBOB) in London, but this time it is official, and that is a duty we will try to honour as best we can. The March of the Eastern Man has begun. May the gods be with us.

It is a badge of honour to have Blaakyum’s name on the W:O:A website alongside giants such as Annihilator, Black Label Society, At The Gates, Angra, Amorphis, Dark Tranquillity, Obituary, Death Angel, Judas Priest, Savatage, Opeth, Nuclear Assault, My Dying Bride, Queensryche, Sepultura, Sabaton and many more....

Blaakyum will be performing in Wacken Open Air on the 29th of July at the W:E:T stage at 12:40 PM (Noon)

p.s. A lot has happened in the past month, after a great event in which we won the Lebanese heat of the W:O:A Metal Battle, things went a bit dodgy and the Middle East finals in Cairo were cancelled. read all about it here.

Roots? Bloody Roots? Dabbke Roots?

When Bassem Deaibess composed The Land back when he was with his cover band Communion in 2005, he wanted to see how people would react to having something oriental and Lebanese in his music. The Land was a heavy Rock song not entirely Metal. When Blaakyum was reformed in 2007, the band decided to make the song a bit heavier so it would sound Metalish and included it in their debut album in 2012 'Lord Of The Night'. The band didn't know what to expect, the idea was to create a different type of Oriental Metal not the typical Metal that usually relay almost completely on Keyboards to sound Oriental, like what most bands in the Middle East do, nor that uses a bit of oriental scales, which has been part of Rock and Metal in the west since forever (Kashimr, Gates of Babylon... etc). The aim was to sound authentic within the typical Metal band's instruments. It was a very positive experience, both the local scene and the international scene liked it. Now we are taking things one step further, incorporating our most traditional Folk, not just the Arabic Folk but the Levant Folk called Dabbkeh. We came up with this, let us know what you think.

Proudly and Humbly Blaakyum on Metal-Bell Magazine cover

Blaakyum is honoured to be featured as the cover story of Metal Bell Magazine... Probably Metal-Bell Mag is one of the biggest achievements of our local Lebanese scene, The amount of effort and hard work of its team has landed it on a path of success after success, rising it into an authoritative Metal outlet not only in Lebanon but in the Middle East...




Check out issue #6 here: www.metal-bell.com

Historical Interview

The site: Echoes And Dust has conducted an extensive interview with Blaakyum, delving into the Lebanese Metal Scene History... be sure to check it out:

http://echoesanddust.com/2014/10/interview-blaakyum/

Lord Of The Night Now Available Online

Blaakyum debut album "Lord Of The Night" is now available as a Digital release on all major online outlets such as iTunes, Amazon MP3, 7Digital, Spotify, Shazam, Last.fm and many others...

This is a good way for fans and friends outside Lebanon to get hold of the Album.

Enjoy a Metal album Made In Lebanon \m/

Breaking the Status Quo

Two unprecedented events happened within one week in Lebanon. The first was the Radio One's Jim Beam Rocks show hosting Blaakyum. It is definitely not the first time a Lebanese Metal band is interviewed on the Radio, but for the first time since at least the 90s Heavy Metal was played on a Lebanese Radio at PEAK TIME! We all remember the Dark Wave and Rock shows hosted on RML by Mr. Jyad El Murr and his efforts to keep a bit of Metal aired on the radio, but never was Metal aired on a peak time ever since the illegal rock stations were closed by the end of the 90s. So there we were between 7 and 8 pm a Radio peak time Heavy Metal was pouring out of Radio One, and it was not just any Metal it was purely Made In Lebanon. We thought as a band that they will only want to play the soft songs, for that I would have said: "Then why interviewing a Heavy Metal band?" but when we approached Maximus (the host), his reply was:"oh yea we will play Metal no problem". But Blaakyum was not the one who succeeded in being on air, definitely thanks to Radio One Lebanon and Jim Beam this happened, but what made this a milestone in the Lebanese Metal Scene was the amount of people who contacted Radio One during the show, Radio One has a Whatsapp number for people to contact the station, and the response was enormous. Both hosts Maximus and Stephany were impressed and told us that never have they received so much response while hosting a Lebanese band, the interview will be uploaded soon and you can hear that for yourselves.

 That was on the 25th of July, on the 2nd of August Blaakyum performed at Byblos international festival. Never before did an international Lebanese Festival approach a local Lebanese band… This is a step forward for the Lebanese Metal Scene to get the recognition it deserves, we are not noise, we are not marginal people, we are not drug addicts nor people of the occult, we are talented musicians and people with a peculiar taste in music, we are free thinkers, we question everything and this is reflected in our music… For this we need to thank Buzz Production, Byblos Festival organisers, Epica band and management, Radio One crew and management, and Jim Beam… Truly as is Jim Beam slogan, they are making History… We shall Rise with the Scene \m/ 

Blaakyum interview on LebMetal.com

LebMetal.com were very kind to interview us, check the interview on the most active Lebanese Metal online community:

CLICK HERE