Metal Orizon rises from ashes with third album

GALE NGAKANE
Correspondent | Wednesday September 23, 2009 00:00

One of the first rock bands in the country, Metal Orizon were a hit with local rock music lovers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but were left shell-shocked by the death of Spencer Sekwababe who passed away in 2003 after a short illness.

However, there was renewed optimism with the coming of the second album - Myopic Enslavement - in 2004 (the first one, entitled Ancestral Blessings came out in 1998) which contained my favourite, We Are Rolling. The lyrics said it all: 'We're gonna rock and roll with you/We gonna take all of you on our way/With no one left behind we are rocking/You're gonna ride on our wave/To the far away places/Time will never matter coz we're on the roll.'

Its first chorus went like this: 'We're rolling/together we're a team of winners/ We're rolling/We're never going back for anything/We are rolling/ Together we gonna make it there/We're rolling/We've got nothing left behind.'

Bass guitarist, Santos Thabakgolo, who dropped by Mmegi offices on Friday to showcase the new baby, christened only Metal Orizon, says they hit a snag after Sekwababe's death.

A year after his demise, another member, Selaelo 'Slaezah' Selaelo went for further education. As if that were not enough, Thabakgolo, a police inspector, was transferred to Rakops.

'Those were really trying times for us as a band,' he recalls, adding that fortunately for him, while in Rakops, he was offered a course, which saw him commuting between the Boteti village and Gaborone.

Also, while there he would use every opportunity to travel to Gaborone and he used the time in the capital city to look for people to replace those who had left the group, and eventually record.

The gods seemed to show some benevolence as he managed to find a guitarist by the name of Dumi and a vocalist whom Thabakgolo could only remember as 'OD'. They also hooked up with veteran drummer, Makhwengwe Mengwe.

There was also Gaone Mokhawa, on vocals who together with 'OD' soon dropped out, and they were left with only Makhwengwe and Dumi.

But in 2006, Selaelo returned from Cape Town, South Africa where he had gone for further studies and together with other band members, they went about looking for finance to record the third album.

Though it has been cooked and ready for the dishing since 2004, it was only this month, five years later that the album titled Metal Orizon was released.

The voice of Sekwababe poignantly lives on in six previously recorded tracks, My Beautiful Land; What's Going On; The Game; You'll Get There; and Bitter Life (all from second album - Myopic Enslavement and The Eagle taken from Ancestral Blessing. The six are accompanying six new tracks We Gonna Win; I Have Found;  Let Them Down; Show Me The World; You Can't Stop Me and I Cry.

So far the fellows are marketing the album by themselves and it can be presently be found at Rock and Roll Music outlets in Francistown and Gaborone.

They would have loved to launch the album on September 26 at Chez Ntemba outside Mogoditshane but according to Thabakgolo, they were informed at the last minute that management had a change of heart.

An irate Thabakgolo telephoned Showbiz about an hour after dropping the new album that they had been refused to do the launch at the club and that it came as a bombshell for him. 'I am going to have to start looking for a new venue all over again. I am not happy with what they have done to me at all,' he said.Chez Ntemba management could not be reached for comment.