Just about every band has had to cut practice sessions short due
to noise complaints. But it’s not every day the neighborhood
band plays songs with over 70 men and women chanting in Hebrew over
heavy metal guitar riffs.
“It was going pretty well until the cops came. I guess the
chanting scared people,” said Jon Schnitzer, one of the
producers of The Makkabees, a heavy metal rock band with a unique
conceit: The band covers Jewish folk songs and gives them a harder
edge.
On Dec. 4, The Makkabees will have a “Bar Mitzvah
Blowout” at the Gershwin Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard to
celebrate the release of their debut album, “Vol.
Aleph.” A percentage of the profits will go to Mazon, a
Jewish group that has raised over $35 million toward ending world
hunger since 1985.
“We all grew up with these songs,” Schnitzer said.
“People may think it’s odd to portray these traditional
songs the way we do, but a lot of these songs are about having a
good time. “˜Hava Nagila’ means “˜let us rejoice
and be glad.’ I consider it the original hip-hop song. If
anything, we’re preserving tradition through unconventional
means.”
Unconventional is definitely a good word to describe “Vol.
Aleph.” The album opens with the classic “Shabbat
Shalom,” which starts slow but quickly evolves into a Black
Flag-esque romp. Another highlight comes in “Mashiach,”
a heavy anthem in which Zohar sounds like the offspring of The
Darkness’ Justin Hawkins and Rammstein.
“When I’m driving in my car listening to it,
“˜Mashiach’ makes me feel like a Jewish Conan the
Barbarian,” Schnitzer said.
Schnitzer also said the band specifically did not offer
translations of the Hebrew lyrics in the album’s liner notes
because they wanted people to search for the meanings themselves.
The Makkabees view its music and eccentric presentation as a way to
get people interested in what it has to say.
The band itself is one man, Zohar, who plays every instrument on
“Vol. Aleph.” How The Makkabees came to be is just as
surreal as its practice sessions.
At a party, the Brain Factory production group (Schnitzer, Greg
Magnuson and Jinsha Moore, a 2000 graduate of UCLA’s Anderson
School of Business) came upon Zohar, with his heavy beard and
acoustic guitar, playing Jewish folk songs.
“It seemed so unreal,” Schnitzer recalled. “He
didn’t know anyone there, and he walked in with his
guitar.”
The trio asked Zohar if he knew the Hebrew celebration song
“Hava Nagila,” to which he responded affirmatively and
began to play. The group then asked Zohar to “rock out”
to the song, which he did with enthusiasm. It was then, Schnitzer
said, that they made the decision to form a group.
With Zohar and Magnuson on the technical end, Moore and
Schnitzer worked on putting together a list of songs, keeping the
thematic focus and getting the word out.
And word has gotten out. The band has been noticed in
publications such as Scotland’s Metal Invader magazine,
garnering a rave review from a notoriously tough critic.
“The main thing we tried to go for was to make something
that you could listen to from beginning to end without skipping a
song,” Schnitzer said.
The “Bar Mitzvah Blowout” begins at 8:30 p.m. on
Dec. 4, and attendees are asked to contribute a $5 donation. Visit
www.makkabees.com to R.S.V.P.