In 2003, in this city, fourteen men between twenty-two and thirty-five were sentenced to between one month and one year in prison. Nine of them played in bands. Part of the evidence was a T-shirt. The judge noted that normal people go to concerts in a suit and tie.

Twenty-two years later, on 20 September 2025, the pitch of the RUC stadium was handed over to death metal for the night: Katatonia from Sweden, Gorod from France, a Moroccan tribute to Death. Entry was free. Forty thousand people passed through the festival over four days. The competition that feeds it received 340 applications that year. Ten of them were metal.

Ten. That is the number the whole night is built on top of.

I spent the day among the faces. Corpse paint applied in a queue, in September, in Casablanca, where September is thirty degrees, and the paint does not survive the first song. Boys finishing each other's skulls with a fingertip. Grown men waiting for four hours in black denim for a Swedish band to arrive. A crowd that was once a criminal case and is now a scheduling decision, sweating in unison.

Nothing here is a rebellion anymore. It is just a very committed weekend.