Pakistani rock

[2] The genre began rooted in the ultraconservative regime of President Zia-ul-Haq who had denounced the Western culture and put forwarded the program of Islamized transformation of the country.

[4] The quick success of the music jolted the country in a time when President General Zia-ul-Haq was reigning, as the historically, most popular chairman and Pakistani Leader in history.

[4] The country’s major urban music media centres saw a quiet but steady outpouring of brand new rock bands who wanted to sound somewhat different than the time's top pop-rock scions.

[7] In the 1980s, rock bands including the Strings, The Barbarians, The Final Cut, Jupiters, Junoon, and Vital Signs gained a lot of public appraisal and popularity.

[7] NTM, launched a show titled Music Channel Charts to highlight new talent every week due to popular youth demand.

Cities such as Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad witnessed an explosion of rock bands and concerts in 2000 as Pakistan began to liberalize under President Musharraf's "enlightened moderation" campaign.

[4] With the rise of Vital Signs and later, Junoon and others, the rock music, exploded in the 1980s and 1990s, became a vehicle for expressing patriotic nationalist spirit in Pakistan.

[11] According to the editorial written in The Express Tribune in 2011, the "Vital Signs and Pakistan's ingenious rock music was the only "arsenal" the country had against India's encroaching entertainment industry.

Guitarist Salman Ahmad gained fame for his unique style of playing Sufi-style and neoclassical musics in heavy metal form.

[15] Since 2004, the economic liberalization programmes of Prime minister Shaukat Aziz which helped open the new Pakistan TV and several music video channels, have triggered the underground heavy metal movements in cities such as Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.