by Niklas Göransson

Raised under totalitarian skies – amid death anthems and riots – a young antagonist moved to Virginia in 1987. After finding his way into the death metal underground, Gelal started sowing the seeds of iconoclasm.

 

GELAL NECROSODOMY: In 1978, my dad worked at some kind of graphic design company in Tennessee. But then, our whole family suddenly packed up and moved to Argentina, where my parents are from. My dad’s brother died in a motorcycle accident, so he had to help his parents deal with the estate.

When Gelal relocated to Argentina at age five, the country was under military rule, governed by a junta that had seized power two years earlier.

GELAL: I was just a kid, but I remember folks being scared and cautious. I’ll never forget some of the things I saw back then… military trucks and shit rolling through the streets, soldiers stopping people to check their documents, all of that. Those involved in suspicious activity – and probably many innocents too – were taken away, and nobody knew what the fuck happened to them.

By 1978, Argentina was in the midst of what became known as the Dirty War – a period of intense government control, strict censorship, and a pervasive military presence in everyday life. With political activity closely monitored and dissent harshly punished, public discussions on sensitive topics were often avoided.

GELAL: Argentina only had a couple of TV channels, all controlled by the government; you saw what they wanted you to see. A lot of stuff was banned, so there’s a whole chunk of my life with barely any exposure to American pop culture – but we got some shows dubbed in Spanish, like reruns of Bonanza, Kojak, and Little House on the Prairie.

What about music?

GELAL: My parents never listened to music. In Argentina, I don’t think we even had a stereo or a radio. I remember the national anthem and some folk tunes we learned in school but beyond that, the only songs I knew were soccer chants – because I started going to stadium games when I was five.

I wonder if that contributed to the ‘anthemic’ quality of your metal music.

GELAL: It’s possible. Actually, if you translate a lot of the chants, it’s way more than just ‘Go, team, go!’ They’re singing about death. ‘I don’t want a funeral – just my club’s colours on my coffin. That’s all I want. I’ll support my team even when I’m dead.’ You start chanting this shit as a kid, and you end up believing in it wholeheartedly.

Over the following years, Gelal became a regular attendee at matches with his home team, Club Atlético Racing of Nueva Italia, Córdoba.

GELAL: When they start taking you to games as a kid, you don’t just become a fan of the sport – you become a devotee of the club, and that’s for life, man. There’s a saying down there: you can change your car, your wife, your house, even move to another country… but you cannot change your club colours; those are forever. And the chants are a big part of this.

These experiences clearly made a profound impression, seeing as how football remains a focal point in Gelal’s life today – both as a spectator and a player.

GELAL: What struck me most was how different the adults became at the games. During the week, they were ordinary people with jobs and normal lives. But at the stadium? Transformed. Pissed off, ecstatic, screaming, cussing, hurling the vilest insults – shit no five-year-old should ever hear. I remember looking up at them, thinking, ‘These guys are turning into fucking beasts.’

As someone with a lifelong disinterest in team sports, this sounds utterly alien to me.

GELAL: I know, man. Football is different from other sports because it identifies people and ties them to where they grew up. These clubs aren’t just soccer teams but also community centres. That’s why it’s so hard to explain unless you live it. The emotion just takes over. These games matter. People die there – heart attacks from stress, dropping dead in the stands. Because to them, the stadium is their church.

 

In 1983, the family moved back to the United States. At age ten, Gelal found himself in New York City – but after five years abroad, his English was rusty, and he needed a year of language classes to catch up.

GELAL: It was all still in my head, but I hadn’t spoken English for years. On top of that, I’d missed out on everything related to American culture: TV shows, geography, politics, and especially music. By then, metal and hard rock were huge there. I mean, you had bands like BON JOVI just across the river in New Jersey. And keep in mind, New York City was a stop for every touring band.

During the mid-1980s, legendary New York venues like L’Amour in Brooklyn served as hubs for metalheads, while CBGB was a breeding ground for punk, hardcore, and early crossover. Thrash, traditional heavy metal, and glam rock all coexisted – with ANTHRAX representing the heavier side, and more mainstream acts such as TWISTED SISTER finding massive success.

GELAL: Despite being a melting pot, New York was still divided – different neighbourhoods for different ethnicities. Even in school, people kept to their own, almost like prison. The hard rockers and metal guys on one side, the hip-hop and breakdance crowd on the other. Just like those clichés you see in American movies with football jocks, nerds, weirdos, and cheerleaders.

After seeing bands like SCORPIONS on TV, Gelal was immediately hooked. He soon found his way to the school’s metalhead contingent.

GELAL: Having grown up completely without music, I didn’t go through the usual progression – KISS to LED ZEPPELIN to AC/DC and shit like that. Instead, all of it just hit me at once – QUIET RIOT, DOKKEN, DEF LEPPARD, and those kinds of bands. VAN HALEN was one I listened to a lot; they had some metal qualities, and everything kept getting progressively heavier.

After exploring older heavy metal like BLACK SABBATH and DIO, Gelal reached another milestone when he discovered IRON MAIDEN.

GELAL: Growing up without much money, I listened to whatever I could get my hands on. I don’t remember owning a real album – like a store-bought one – until the late 80s. Besides a VAN HALEN tape, just one, I had nothing but dubs from school friends. The first original IRON MAIDEN cassette I actually owned was “Somewhere in Time”. I didn’t even have a record player. I didn’t have shit.

 

During his time in New York City, drawing became the young Gelal’s primary creative outlet.

GELAL: In school, most kids can’t draw, but there are always a couple who are good at it – the ones everyone comes to for help. That was me. My teacher mentioned an art contest for a scientific brochure or some shit, so I submitted a drawing and won out of… I don’t know, maybe a hundred fifth-graders. So, I guess I was okay.

Were you self-taught?

GELAL: Yeah. I took some art classes in high school, but they just discouraged me. The teachers made us do the whole spectrum – papier-mâché, charcoal, colour work, cutting shit out. I didn’t like any of that and wanted to focus on drawing, so it kind of put me off. Then I moved to Virginia and started getting into the guitar thing.

In 1987, at fourteen, Gelal moved with his family from New York City to Oakton, Virginia.

GELAL: I started hanging around kids who looked like my old crowd – long hair, band shirts with skulls and shit. Like I said before, I didn’t have a proper musical upbringing, so I had no clue. Those guys smoked marijuana all day, and I’d think, ‘Man, how do these motherfuckers go home stinking of weed without their parents noticing?’ They drank, dropped acid, smoked cigarettes…

You did none of that?

GELAL: Nah, I was a fucking angel by comparison. No way I could come home drunk at fourteen; my family was too close for that to work. But I guess these kids had parents who didn’t give a shit. Eventually, I realised people like that gravitate toward drugs because they’re missing something at home and then find an external family – similar to joining a gang.

Soon enough, Gelal figured out that his new friends weren’t metalheads at all.

GELAL: They called themselves Deadheads. I’m like, ‘What the fuck is a Deadhead?’ Turned out these fuckers were fans of THE GRATEFUL DEAD. I’d been thinking, ‘Yeah, metal!’ Then I started meeting actual headbangers, hardcore kids, skinheads, and punks, who’d go, ‘Why are you hanging out with the hippies?’ Again, I was like, ‘What the fuck is a hippie?’ I had no concept of the Vietnam War or any of that. ‘Yeah, they listen to THE GRATEFUL DEAD – the biggest hippie band in the world.’

Around this time, a distant relative passed away, leaving Gelal with a stack of old records – classic rock acts like CREAM, Ted Nugent, and Meat Loaf.

GELAL: I listened and thought, ‘Man, this is fucking terrible.’ But the Deadheads loved it – ‘Dude, give me the CREAM LP. I have some MEGADETH vinyl.’ That’s actually how I discovered MERCYFUL FATE. I got “Melissa” through one of those trades and thought, ‘Oh, this looks rough.’ I was scared shitless when I first heard it. ‘Who is this crazy motherfucker, King Diamond? I hope he doesn’t show up at my house; I don’t want my mom seeing him!’

 

Meanwhile, fuelled by a growing obsession with Eddie Van Halen’s solos and the stirring leads of IRON MAIDEN, Gelal began playing guitar.

GELAL: I just picked it up and started experimenting. I’m left-handed, but I didn’t even know left-handed guitars existed. I saw people playing a certain way and thought, ‘Alright, so you hold the guitar like this’, even though, technically, I should’ve been holding it the other way. I never realised Tony Iommi was also left-handed – and missing fingers.

BLACK SABBATH’s iconic guitarist Tony Iommi lost the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident at seventeen. To compensate, he used plastic prosthetic fingertips and lighter gauge strings, developing a unique playing style that helped define heavy metal.

GELAL: There’s really no fixed rule, I guess. I took some guitar lessons in school, but didn’t pick up anything useful – total waste of time. I tried learning to read music on my own yet lacked the patience. This was also before I knew anything about chords.

A chord is a combination of multiple notes played together, forming the backbone of most Western music. Many self-taught guitarists in rock and metal begin with power chords – simple two-note shapes that suggest a chord without involving full harmonic complexity.

GELAL: I’d hear about music theory – people studying it at universities, getting properly trained – and think, ‘Man, I must be missing out on some secret knowledge.’ But there’s no great mystery; it’s just concepts of chord progressions and how notes fit together. Then you look at India, and none of our Western shit applies – they have their own system. Korea has something else.

Indian classical music revolves around ragas – melodic frameworks built on microtonal shifts and emotional nuance rather than fixed chord sequences. Similarly, traditional Korean music often relies on pentatonic scales and fluid rhythmic structures, diverging from the strict time signatures and harmonic expectations typical of Western composition.

GELAL: I believe my lack of training is probably why I developed this style that people find unique. It’s like how football players from Brazil who learned on the street with a plastic ball and no shoes pull off moves nobody teaches; they just do it naturally. You develop your own style, I guess. None of it was intentional.

 

Gelal got his start as a guitarist while he was still hanging out with the Deadheads. As it turned out, some of them had formed a band.

GELAL: One day, they said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna jam – come over?’ So, I brought my guitar, expecting to play something heavy, but these guys didn’t even use distortion. I went, ‘Dude, what the fuck is this?’ I tried learning with them, but it didn’t work out. Plus, I had no car or anything; we lived in the suburbs, and everything was far away.

Once Gelal befriended some actual metalheads, a few of them were also interested in jamming. And thus, GENOCIDE – featuring Gelal on guitar – was born in 1988.

GELAL: One of the guitarists, Kommando, was a few years older and could play some SLAYER. Meanwhile, I barely understood how anything worked. I knew a band should have a bass player, but I didn’t grasp why – because he’d just follow the exact same pattern as the guitar, or so I thought. I hadn’t realised how, for example, BLACK SABBATH’s bass did something totally different from the guitar and drums.

Once they’d started playing together, Kommando taught Gelal the basics of guitar, such as building riffs from chords.

GELAL: After two or three months, Kommando said, ‘Fuck it, man, you’re already better than me – I’m moving to bass.’ We started writing songs together. I’d come up with riffs, and… I hadn’t heard that many bands from around the world, so I assumed some of my stuff was original. Later on, people told me, ‘Oh, this sounds like RUNNING WILD or HELLOWEEN’, but I’d never listened to them.