This Emirati band hopes to rock Madison Square Garden

Up three flights of stairs and onto a roof in Barsha South is where you’ll find the amp-lined walls and cable-littered floor of a small home recording studio.

“I like to describe our stuff as metal for the people who aren’t into metal, but not metal enough for the people who are,” says Saif Sami, lead singer and guitarist of the Emirati metal band Metarust.

City Times recently caught up with the band for a fascinating introduction to Dubai’s underappreciated rock scene. With their new single Hollow that debuted on March 4, the band is eager to showcase their unique sound.

Metarust has been playing for almost 13 years now, first coming together when Saif met bassist Marwan El-Messeery, 25, at school. After discovering a shared love of music, the two roped in Saif’s brother, drummer Samir, 22, and began learning music together.

They began playing at school talent shows as kids, eventually progressing to stages at Ibn Battuta Mall and Global Village as teens. After that, they performed wherever they could, even once performing at an Indian wedding.

“I was supposed to sing, but one of my friends gave me pani puri right before we went on,” Saif says, laughing as he remembers how the spicy snack sent him into a coughing fit.

“The best part is, if you look at the pictures, the drum set was right next to the pani puri station,” his brother Samir chimes in.

The brothers are both audio engineers, earning their degrees from SAE Institute Dubai. Finding time to play together while going to college proved difficult for the band, as El-Messeery pursued his higher education in the UK in 2016.

The band says they would often share audio clips of each other playing, trying to write original music remotely.

“We didn’t have anything concrete, like a full song. It was a riff here, a chord there, maybe some lyrics,” says El-Messeery.

It was only when everyone was present in the UAE that they could record their first single Killing Me Psycho.

“When I usually came back during winter or summer break, I would just be recording my parts,” El-Messeery recalls.

“We wouldn’t even hang out, we wouldn’t eat together, we wouldn’t even meet with friends. He would just come here and be recording every day,” adds Saif.

Metarust has since come out with rock and metal singles Crutch City, E.G.O and most recently, Atone, with each song exploring different sub-genres.

“We offer something different with every song that we release,” says Saif.

Metarust’s ambiguous sound is an intentional choice, with songs being impacted by each member’s tastes outside of metal, which range from indie and hip-hop to jazz and classical.

“We balance each other out, so it brings out the best in us,” says Saif.

Rock in the UAE

Metarust describes the UAE’s rock and metal scene, oddly, as “wholesome,” with local bands constantly hyping each other up rather than competing.

“Everybody knows who Metallica and AC/DC are, but when we’re asked who our favourites are, we always talk about local bands like Svengali, Coat of Arms and Callous Minds,” says Saif. “These are bands that influence us, that inspire us to keep pushing.”

Metarust looks to take the band, along with the UAE’s scene at large, global, noting that facilitating places where original music can be played and appreciated would help them do so.

“When people think music, they should think UAE,” says Samir.

The band also seemed to have a very clear vision of where they wanted to be in the near future.

Music is for everyone

Having played around the country, Metarust often talks about how young homegrown bands in the UAE are ripe for the spotlight.

“These kids come on and they play both Metallica and their own original music, and they’re so good,” says drummer Samir Sami, noting that players were often as young as 17.

The band was also quick to acknowledge that they believed that the UAE could produce several more world-class musicians if music production were more accessible.

Samir, an audio engineer by profession, recalls meeting an aspiring young Emirati rapper.

“Something he told me that shocked me was that a goal of his — and a lot of locals share this because it’s so difficult — was to record at least one song in his lifetime and put it out. That blew my mind, because that should be easy, not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Samir bought the young musician to Metarust’s home studio not even a month later, recording and producing several of his very first songs and eventually teaching him to produce his own music.

In fact, Metarust’s home studio rarely sits empty, proudly serving as a hub for their community. They hope to soon be able to open up a larger public studio to help further Dubai’s music scene.

“We believe in honing your craft, but we don’t believe that music and recording should be restricted to professionals,” says Samir.

• UAE