Claire Harvey: Metallers are Down and out

New Zealand has blown it with the metalheads.

The pasty black-clad fans of bands such as Septic Flesh, Methadrone, Total F ... ing Destruction and System of a Down have been talking about Aotearoa lately, and many are not impressed.

It's not because New Zealand is responsible for Hayley Westenra, although that is pretty bad.

It's not even because this country produced Shihad - the band who horrified the metal world by caving in to pressure from nervous record executives and temporarily changing their name to Pacifier because their old name sounded too much like Jihad.

No, the real New Zealand crime against music was a decision by the Overseas Investment Commission to deny a land purchase application by Serj Tankian, lead singer of System of a Down.

The OIC ruled it was "not in the national interest" to allow Tankian, a Beirut-born American, to spend $890,000 building a recording studio on a 13.69ha slice of Bethells Beach on Auckland's west coast.

Metal webloggers around the world with aliases like "Basskiller" are bemoaning the spoilsport OIC for turning him down. "It is a pretty kickass thing he wanted to do," wrote Basskiller sadly.

In this election campaign, as politicians at both ends of the spectrum complain about the number of rich people with funny accents buying up the soil, it's interesting to see how tough it is for even a wealthy, talented American businessman to give us his money.

The Greens say New Zealand should stop land sales to foreigners in the interests of preserving "national sovereignty, economic self-reliance, environmental sustainability and cultural identity". New Zealand First believes "the private interest of foreign shareholders is not our concern," and dismisses the OIC as "a rubber stamp, a total joke".

Land sales are a sensitive topic in small, beautiful towns throughout New Zealand. Chat to a local and within minutes they'll be relating how the big place on the hill has gone to the Australians, or the Americans, or the Chinese.

When the OIC allowed big-haired Canadian singer Shania Twain and her husband Mutt Lange to buy a lovely slab of South Island high country, in return for their agreement to create a public walking track and camping facilities, dismayed Greens co-leader Rod Donald said it proved the OIC's "national interest" test was far too weak.

But Tankian's case proves that it's not so easy.

"We've had several members of the public writing to us asking why Mr Tankian wasn't given consent," says Annelies McClure, chief executive of the OIC.

She diplomatically refrains from saying if the letters were written in blood or the mock-gothic lettering beloved of metallists, but says the general tone was critical.

In response to concerns about foreign sales, the Government issued the OIC - now known as the Overseas Investment Office - with new criteria, including tougher environmental criteria and special scrutiny for coastal and riverside land sales.

Tankian's application was one of the last to be considered under the old rules, but it was rejected in July because the OIC wasn't convinced he was genuinely intending to move here or to create jobs, McClure says.

Tankian's application sounded exciting - the studio was to be used by his label, Serjical Strike Records, to record and promote New Zealand bands.

Tankian, a critic of the Bush Administration's Iraq invasion, a vocal pacifist and a campaigner for homeless rights, says he wanted to move here because of New Zealand's "political neutrality, cultural awareness and environmental respect".

Many of his lyrics are serious criticisms of American foreign policy. The song Cigaro, which includes the lyrics "My c**k is much bigger than yours/ My c**k can walk right through the door," can at one level be read as a comment on imperialism, even if the pimply 13-year-old fans don't notice.

Tankian told the OIC his new studio would create jobs in New Zealand, but was reluctant to give any firm, written commitments or to take New Zealand residency, McClure says.

"We thought it would be great if it happened, and we would have been reasonably comfortable with just a promise that he was actually going to do all these things. But he came back and said he couldn't in all honesty put his hand on his heart and say it was going to happen," she says.

"If he had applied for residency, that would have been enough, because the Government does recognise that you are demonstrating a commitment to the national interest by pulling up your roots and your family and settling here.

"If your investment is not doing much for the economy apart from making money go around, that's not really good enough."

There are some metal fans out there who still like New Zealand; the ones such as Skunkworks who thinks System of a Down are soft and commercial.

"I can just picture all the losers coming into his recording studio and instantly devaluing all the property around it," blogged Skunkworks. Could metal have solved Greater Auckland's housing-affordability problem? We'll never know.

* Sandra Paterson is taking a break from her column while working on a book. Claire Harvey is a Herald features staff writer.