Features of the extreme music industry in the Middle East

Abstract

This article analyzes the features of the extreme music industry in the Middle East. The extreme industry of this region does not have a wide genre spectrum as in the West, but nevertheless the heavy metal scene is no worse developed. Middle Eastern metal is a special regional type of extreme music formed at the junction of Western secularism and the confrontation of Islamic dogmatism with liberal trends. To comprehend Islamic liberalism in the modern sense, a brief review of the motives and  influence of the Arab Spring on the region was made. As the subject of the study, the authors decided to take advantage of the most common list of countries in the Middle East. But the article covers the most striking examples of the work of musical groups from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The authors made an in-depth analysis of 4 music tracks, along with album covers and interviews of the participants. Cultural globalization shows the rapidly changing cultural space of the Middle East Society. The authors concluded that cultural globalization has different outcomes in different countries. This was influenced by the preservation of censorship, war and the dissemination of ideas of liberalism through the media. This topic was not studied from a religious point of view in the post-Soviet space.