2020 has been a difficult year for every band, but it's been an especially tough few years for Syrian metallers Maysaloon.
The civil war in their home country forced the band to relocate to Beirut in Lebanon in 2018 where they began working on their second album, A Lip To Earth, A Lip To Heaven And A Tongue To The Stars. But the economic crisis and the huge bomb blast that devastated Beirut in August meant they have been unable to finish it.
Now the band have launched a crowd-funding campaign to finish the album, which is inspired by the Baal Cycle, a Middle Eastern mythology based around the cycle of life and death.
Says Maysloon frontman Jake Shuker: “We started writing the album in Syria in 2018. But the country was and still is a mess. It is suffering financially and it has not been safe since the war started so you can imagine the difficulty faced by four members forging their own way out of this massive mess while countless parties are fighting on our land.
“We have been based in Lebanon since 2018, but the situation there has also been tough as the country is devastated economically and politically, making it difficult for us to secure funds to complete the album.
“We felt devastated about explosion in Beirut, because Lebanon has always been a shelter for Syrian musicians. The explosion itself affected one of our members, as the blast damaged his place.
“We know how the world is in these difficult times and how everything is affected by the pandemic. We waited before launching this campaign, in the hope that the right moment would come, sadly to no avail. There is no right moment, we need to plough through.”
Shuker adds that returning to Syria to finish the album isn’t a realistic option.
“Unfortunately it has become much worse now since the pandemic started and the country descended into a financial crisis. Everything became too expensive, not to mention the constant absence of the basic needs of life. Metal wise, there are some warriors still left doing some gigs and music which is really great to see – after all Syria needs youth and art to thrive back into prosperity.”
You can find all the information on Maysaloon’s crowd-funding campaign here.
