Each month in the magazine we play an artist or group a series of tracks which they are asked to comment on – with no prior knowledge of what they are about to hear.

In The Wire 501 it is the turn of East African metal pioneer Lord Spikeheart, real name Martin Kanja.

Here you can listen to a mix of the tracks our correspondent Claire Biddles played to Kanja during the interview, which is published in full in The Wire 501. To find out what Kanja said about them, subscribers can read the interview in our online magazine library here. Or you can buy a copy of the magazine in our online shop.

But first, a brief biography of our subject:

Lord Spikeheart is the pseudonym of vocalist, producer and songwriter Martin Kanja, a leading figure in the East African metal scene. Kanja grew up in the city of Nakuru in Kenya, where he spent his teenage years listening to rock and metal, as well as the hiphop and trap being played by his friends and sister. In 2010 at the age of 19, he moved to Nairobi, where he immersed himself in the capital city’s metal underground and formed his first band, Lust Of A Dying Breed. After a short hiatus from music in the mid-2010s, he joined the death metal six-piece The Seeds Of Datura in 2016. In 2019, following a relocation to Uganda, he formed the duo Duma with producer Sam Karugu, adding glitchy synthesizers and industrial beats to black metal and grindcore.

Now based back in Kenya, Lord Spikeheart enjoys the experimental freedom of making music as a solo artist. Metal forms the core of his acclaimed 2024 debut album The Adept, but Kanja revels in an expanded notion of heavy sounds, incorporating trap beats, hard dance rhythms, digital hardcore and East African elements. Kanja sings, screams and growls in English, Swahili and the Bantu language Kikuyu, exuding a ferocious energy that is amplified during his live shows. His songs are pro-liberation, anti-oppression, and The Adept carries a dedication to his great-grandmother, the only female field marshal during the Kenyan Mau Mau Uprising against British colonialists.

In his solo career, Kanja remains a prolific collaborator, appearing on tracks by Berlin hiphop artist DJ Die Soon, Italian underground metal duo OvO and DJ Scotch Egg’s idiosyncratic side project Scotch Rolex. Several former collaborators returned to guest on The Adept, which features contributions from the likes of Backxwash, Fatboi Sharif and Hybrid Intuition. Released in September this year, his EP Reign is just as heavy and complex, with a title track featuring drums from Sepultura founder Iggor Cavalera.

The Jukebox was conducted online, while Lord Spikeheart was staying in Italy.

Tracklist (with timestamp):

Sepultura (00:00)
“Born Stubborn”
From Roots
(Roadrunner) 1996

billy woods (04:07)
“BLK ZMBY”
From GOLLIWOG
(Backwoodz Studioz) 2025

OvO (06:22)
“You Living Lie”
From Miasma
(Artoffact) 2020

Backxwash (10:42)
“666 IN LUXAXA”
From I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES
(UglyHag) 2021

Last Year’s Tragedy (13:22)
“In Media Res”
From Amongst Lions
(No label) 2021

Crystal Axis (17:48)
“Leopold”
Bandcamp 2018

Napalm Death (22:11)
“On The Brink Of Extinction”
From Time Waits For No Slave
(Century Media) 2009

Ho99o9 (26:10)
“Godflesh”
From Tomorrow We Escape
(Last Gang) 2025

Fun’Da’Mental (30:05)
“Demonised Soul”
From Erotic Terrorism
(Nation) 1998