“Courtesy of the patriarchs’ path shown by ancient ancestral domain … retain or never,” bellows singer Hyginus Tagira to an appreciative crowd of metalheads at a festival in Kokopau, a bustling township in Bougainville.
Tagira is the flamboyant frontman of Conscience – pronounced Con Science – a four-piece metal band. He’s dressed the part, swaddled in a leather cape that must have raised his body temperature to dizzying levels in the fearsome afternoon heat. It’s still early in the festival but hundreds of Bougainvilleans were there, most wearing lurid heavy metal T-shirts.
