Not long after the United States-led invasion of Iraq, the Baghdad heavy metal band Acrassicauda received a death threat. "You are Americanized, playing Western music," it read. "You either quit or ...

Bass player Firas al-Lateef, right, and guitarist/lead singer Faisal Talal of the Iraqi heavy metal rock band, Acrassicauda, named after a species of black scorpion, practice at their apartment in ...

There aren't many bands like Acrassicauda. That's because there aren't many thrash metal bands from Iraq. There also aren't many thrash metal acts who've been forced to flee their native lands for ...

is the rare band whose personal story is at least as compelling as their music. The quartet, who in 2009 moved to New Jersey, according to their blog on . Once the war started, the bombs fell on ...

Acrassicauda are the first metal band to emerge out of war-torn Iraq, and they're coming to Seattle to fire off their petrified, ear-splitting mass of Slayer/Metallica-bred rock. When they formed in ...

If you’ve seen the 2007 film Heavy Metal in Baghdad then you’re already familiar with the band Acrassicauda, the Iraqi subjects of the movie. If not, here’s a quick refresher: Vice Magazine published ...

Members of the Iraqi heavy metal rock band, Acrassicauda, named after a species of black scorpion, pose at an apartment in Elizabeth, N.J., Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009. The band members, from left, bass ...

You can’t make this stuff up: Acrassicauda, a Saddam-era Iraqi thrash band, survived the war but lost their equipment — and the entire building they practiced in — to a missile strike. They suffered ...

Fifteen years ago, Marwan Hussein, Firas Al-Lateef, Faisal Talal and Tony Aziz were teenage headbangers in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, learning to play Metallica and Slayer off bootleg cassettes. They ...

BAGHDAD — Members of the Iraqi band Acrassicauda, spotlighted in the docu “Heavy Metal in Baghdad,” have made it to the U.S., where they have begun a life far from the violence and death threats to ...