Metal has existed in Morocco for almost 30 years. Despite that, the scene is still in its relative infancy, few international bands ever playing the country while even local acts can struggle to get gigs.
But Amine Hamma is looking to change that. One of the organisers of the Tricinty Festival, Morocco’s first dedicated metal festival, Amine is helping to shape the future of his country’s metal scene.
“People come from all across Morocco to attend Tricinty,” Amine says. “But this event is growing and becoming a beautiful platform to showcase local bands. My ambition is to help bands get over to Europe and sign record deals.”
The first Tricinty Festival was held in April 2023, at the Cinéma Renaissance in the Moroccan capital Rabat. Four local bands were invited to play to a few hundred metal fans to commemorate the release of a compilation Amine had made of bands from across Morocco, spanning styles from grunge and death metal to Amazigh rock, a subgenre that mixes rock, metal and traditional Berber folk music.
“We realised there was a real need, not just to give these bands a stage, but to bring the rock and metal community together,” Amine explains. “It gives Moroccan bands a reason to rehearse for something bigger, and opens up new opportunities to perform.”
Amine’s passion is more than just a hobby – it’s something he’s pursued for decades. He first discovered rock and metal via satellite TV in the early 90s, watching videos of Metallica and Nirvana.
By the time nu metal blew up in the mid-90s, an alternative scene had formed around tape-trading networks, allowing Amine and his friends to discover thrash and death metal and form their own bands, Amine first playing in Immortal Spirit in ’96 before forming Reborn in the early 2000s.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, however. In 2003, Amine and 13 other metalheads were arrested and charged with “shaking the foundations of the Islamic faith”, receiving prison sentences for their activities playing in bands and helping promote the scene.
“We went to jail for playing heavy metal,” Amine admits. “They came in and took a load of my shirts and CDs, which really hurt because we didn’t have that many record stores so I’d spent a long time building my collection! The authorities didn’t really understand us. They just saw ties between Satanism and heavy metal.”
Although things looked bleak for a moment, intervention came from an unlikely place – King Mohammed VI helped secure the prisoners’ release and got the charges dropped. Amine admits a terrorist attack months later also softened the government and media’s stance on metal – “After that, they wanted to know what their kids were making,” he explains.
After his release, Amine moved to France, living in Europe for 11 years while he got his Master’s Degree. There, he frequently attended shows and became involved in the organisation and running of events, even attending Hellfest when it was still known as Furyfest. By the time he moved back to Morocco in 2014, he was passionate about promoting his home country’s scene and created a compilation of bands from across the rock and metal spectrum, ultimately founding Tricinty almost a decade later.
Tricinty may be Morocco’s only dedicated metal festival, but it isn’t the only event to invite metal bands over. The Boulevard Festival, hosted in Casablanca, has also hosted bands like Sepultura, Moonspell, Gojira and Kreator in previous years.
“But one festival is not enough,” Amine insists. “When we first got Kreator over, I remember people cried and it was like, ‘Come on, it’s Kreator not Justin Bieber!’”
Tricinty has grown since its inception in 2023. Working as part of the HIBA Foundation – a charity set up by King Mohammed VI to help promote and sustain the arts – and with organisations like the French Institute and Spanish embassy, Tricinty were able bring international bands to the festival for the first time in 2024.
The festival grew even more for its third edition in 2025. Held on May 23 and 24 – the first time the festival has run over multiple days – it featured local bands Thrillogy, Mycose Of You, Old School and We Come For War as well as international acts including French post-metallers Klone, Spanish thrashers Angelus Apatrida and UK alt weirdos Sugar Horse.
The event also featured a drum workshop with UK-based drummer Jack Wench and producer/sound engineer Chris Coulter, an air guitar competition – where the first prize was a brand new guitar – and an academic talk by Gérôme Guibert, a professor of Sociology who has co-authored multiple academic pieces exploring the world of metal.
Once again hosted at Rabat’s Cinéma Renaissance, a short walk from major tourist attraction The Kasbah of the Udayas, the event attracted hundreds of metal fans to headbang, mosh and even stagedive over an orchestral pit in front of the stage.
“For some of these kids, this might be the only metal event they come to this year,” Amine admits. “But it means a lot to us to get international bands over, too. They then can also act as ambassadors for our scene in Europe – ‘Oh, there’s metal in Morocco?’ Yeah! We’re not just into camels and palm trees.”
Follow Tricinty on Instagram to learn more about the festival.
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