Meet Eternal Katastrophy, an up-and-coming death metal band. The five-piece sound like a chainsaw meeting a swarm of angry hornets. Lead singer Danny’s voice rasps like a rusty door. On stage, the guitars and drums are belted out at a million miles an hour. The image of the band is genre-specific, from the hulking, energetic stage presence to the drummer wearing a gas mask during performances, down to the gothic lettering of the band name.
I met the members of the band by chance on a flight from Johannesburg to Luanda, the capital of Angola, to report on a summit between the European Union and Africa.
I had not expected the first people I would meet from the former Portuguese colony on the Atlantic coast to be an extreme metal band. But why not? They represent what the country is in 2026 more than many of the assumptions people make about its history, culture, politics and people.
I arranged to meet Danny (full name Danilson José Serafim Cardoso) and lead guitarist Gedeão Cláudio Soque in a cafe in the centre of Luanda. On stage, Gedeão is all action – his fingers fly across the frets at warp speed. But in person he and Danny are incredibly mild and polite. They are both skinny, dressed mainly in black, with neat dreadlocks. Gedeão works as a graphic designer and Danny works in customer service.
Growing up in the suburbs of Angola’s capital they became interested in the tiny metal scene as teenagers. Gedeão’s brother first sparked his interest when he came back from Portugal with a pile of CDs. At the beginning, all Gedeão could hear was noise. But, like good wine, death metal has its nuances and subtleties and soon he had developed a palate.
If you are looking for an African influence in the music, there is none. But, as Gedeão says, you can sometimes find it in the lyrics. “We just talk about our problems because we have many problems in Angola – social, political, financial problems. We don’t want to sound like revolutionaries or anything like that. We just do our stuff.”
And there are problems in Angola. It should be one of Africa’s richest countries with its extensive mineral and oil reserves. A Portuguese colony since the 16th century, it finally won independence in 1975 after a protracted and bloody civil war. Its first post-independence president, José Eduardo dos Santos, was a traditional strongman ruler who governed for 38 years. His period in power was characterised by continued civil war, followed by rapid increases in oil production. However, economic growth was sporadic and unevenly distributed.
Much of the wealth went to a tiny proportion of the population, with most of the country’s more than 34 million people living below the poverty line. This is evident in Luanda, where just blocks from gleaming five-star hotels and office towers you encounter areas of extreme poverty, where people survive on subsistence incomes.
In 2017, João Lourenço became president and is another “strong man” who has led the country since. He signalled reform by dismissing several prominent officials associated with dos Santos and removing the former president’s daughter, Isabel dos Santos, (once described as Africa’s richest woman and accused of corruption) as head of the state oil company.
China recognised Angola’s potential earlier than most and has invested in the country under its Belt and Road policy. You can see the results around Luanda: a new international airport, gleaming highways, banks, Chinese technology and machinery everywhere. They stand in stark contrast to the shanty towns and grinding poverty elsewhere.
The organic growth of technology – especially mobile phones – has also been transformative in recent years. Connectivity has expanded dramatically, reshaping commerce, communication and access to services.
At the G20 summit in South Africa, its president Cyril Ramaphosa noted that 40 per cent of Africans still lack access to clean water. That is a shocking statistic, but it is an improvement on 20 years ago, and one hopes it will improve further in the decades ahead – provided the threat of climate change can be mitigated.
Much of Angola’s oil wealth lies in Cabinda province, a narrow strip of land separated from the rest of the country, where a long-running separatist conflict has simmered for decades.
The potential of this rugged coastal country remains enormous. A powerful symbol of that is the Lobito corridor – a 1,300km route linking the port of Lobito to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Under Portuguese rule, a railway line carried produce from the interior and from the Congo to the coast for export. During the civil war it fell into disrepair. Chinese capital helped rebuild the railway in this century.
In a tussle between eastern and western powers, European companies have outbid the Chinese for the right to further develop and operate the Lobito corridor, with a potential spend of billions of euro. Once fully operational it will allow copper and cobalt (hugely valuable metals for technology) from the DRC to reach the coast efficiently.
The key test is whether ordinary Angolans will benefit from the uplift generated by oil exports and major infrastructure projects such as the Lobito corridor.
Alex Vines, Africa programme director of the European Council on Foreign Relations – and formerly of Chatham House – notes the economy remains heavily dependent on oil prices.
“Politically, the elite became accustomed to easy oil revenues. Oil still accounts for roughly 30 per cent of GDP and more than 90 per cent of export earnings, despite efforts at diversification,” he says.
“Angola in 2025 became the largest African producer of diamonds and has developed copper and rare-earth mining. This is part of the government’s efforts to diversify its economy away from over-reliance on fossil fuel production. Agriculture has an important role to play.
“Before independence in 1975, Angola was a global coffee powerhouse, ranking among the world’s largest producers – especially Robusta – with production peaking in the early 1970s,” he says.
According to Vines, the Lobito corridor forms part of the EU’s “global gateway” strategy. It is intended not simply as a transport route but as a development corridor, encouraging industrial growth and agribusiness along its length.
“If successful, it could be economically transformative and provide an alternative to China’s Belt and Road projects, with stronger Angolan ownership and regional integration extending into the DRC and possibly Zambia.”
So the message for the future, it seems, is one of cautious hope. If successful it will be characterised by economic diversification driven by a new, outward-looking generation, such as the members of the remarkable Eternal Katastrophy.