mao metal than you can handle (part 1)

Since returning to Beijing and to the 7 Days Inn, Maya and I have laid pretty low this week. That's the beauty of being in China for a month - we don't have drive ourselves nuts, running around all the time, trying to jam every sight into a few days. Plus, this is the week of China's national holiday and just about the whole population of the country is on vacation and traveling, which means that pretty much every sightseeing location is absolutely deluged. We'd rather wait it out than deal with the crazed masses of Chinese tourists.

What we have done this week is discover Beijing's metal underground - and it's pretty fucking cool. On Monday and Tuesday we went to the final 2 nights of the 3-day "Metal Music Festival" held at 13 Club in the Haidian district. I had found out about the venue and the fest via the website metaltravelguide.com, which lists metal clubs, bars, and record stores around the world and is an invaluable resource for any globetrotting headbanger.

The club ended up being a suitably scuzzy place tucked into an alley between a couple of noodle shops. Our cab driver had gone far beyond the call of duty trying to deliver us right to the door of the place, and we greatly appreciated his efforts considering the general rudeness that we've encountered so far in China. As we walked up to the venue entrace, we passed the bathrooms, which were located outside and reeked - but this hadn't prevented a crowd of black-clad, spikey-haired Chinese teenagers from congregating right by them. Maya and I recognized a few Pantera T-shirts, a Metallica tee, an Emperor shirt, among others, in the mix, and we immediately felt at home. The woman at the door turned out to speak English and as we paid our 40 yuan each (a little more than $5) to get in, she asked if we knew any of the bands playing, and if so, who we were there to see. I had read about one of the groups on the bill, Ritual Day, supposedly a Chinese black-metal band, but never actually heard them, so I dropped their name; the woman seemed to know that I didn't really have any idea who they were.

Inside we found a small-ish but comfortable space - maybe around the size of Southpaw in Brooklyn - filled with cigarette smoke, covered in graffiti, and jampacked with young Chinese metalheads, little Asian gothgirls, some college kids not wearing anything resembling the metal uniform, and even a few whities besides ourselves. The first band of the night - Hg, I think they were called - was just hitting the stage, and they kind of sucked, but not for lack of effort. Their sound was mixed very poorly (you could barely heard the guitar), but they played some not-terrible nu-metal-tinged metalcore and were most notable for their very skinny, very young-looking bassplayer who provided endearingly impassioned clean backing vocals. The next band, Sleep Deeply, were kind of a My Dying Bride-ish gothic-metal band with both a dude singer and a chick singer (stuffed into a nice corset). The guy singer had plenty of stage presence and a resonant death-metal roar, but the rest of the band sounded thin and rather amateurish. As for the crowd, they kind of bobbed along to the music but didn't do much in terms of moshing or rocking out. Maya and I, while entertained by the ernestness of both bands and, of course, the novelty of witnessing metal played in China(!), were beginning to wonder if, when it came down to it, Beijing's heavy music scene just kind of sucked.

Then, after we stepped outside for a breath of bathroom-smelling air (which seemed fresh compared to the haze of cigarette smoke inside the 13), we heard the third band, Avulsion, start up their set. It sounded like totally decent metalcore so we ducked back into the club to check the group out and were shocked to find a little Chinese girl (she looked all of 15) providing the totally brutal growling vocals! In between songs, she would grin embarassedly and brush her hair from her eyes, then, without hesitation, suddenly channel some demonic force, let out serious banshee screams, and headbang like a maniac. The crowd went nuts, and one kid even launched himself up into a bit of crowdsurfing. Maybe Beijing did have some idea of what was up after all...



Next up came this group called Suffocated, and they kind of ruled, cranking out super-groovy thrashy death metal. They had plenty of personality, too, care of their short, chubby, affable vocalist-bassist, whirlwind drummer, and a sweet contrast in dual guitar players - the stoic prettyboy on stage left, and on the right, a dude with a face like a Chinese ghost mask and a full range of pained expressions to match his intricate shredding (Maya commented more than a few times about how awesome he was). The crowd clearly knew and loved them, and by the end of their set, so did we.

Maybe even more entertaining than the band, however, was the crowd's display of a moshing technique that Maya and I have never seen before (which is saying a lot considering the insane number of metal shows we've been to in our time). Midway through the band's set, Suffocated's frontman said something in Chinese, clearly exhorting the fans to action the way a vocalist in the U.S. might call for a "circle pit" or for the "wall of death." In response, about half of the audience members suddenly put their arms around the shoulders of the person next to them, then everyone bent slightly at the waist, and proceeded to synchronized headbang together in a completely bizarre rocking-out group-hug of sorts. Maya's and my jaws instantly hit the floor.



We would see this "move" repeated a few more times over the course of the night, and the next day, when we told Eveline about it, she said that she's seen a variation on it, which is for audience members to put their arms around each other's shoulders, form a circle, and then skip counterclockwise, "Ring Around the Rosie"-style!

After Suffocated, Ritual Day took the stage and ripped out some completely respectable buzzing black metal with horror-movie keyboards. They lacked a little in the charisma department, though, and after a while the songs started sounding very same-y, so Maya and I decided to leave while we - and Beijing metal - were ahead. The experience had been an exhilarating one, really the most fun I've had at a show in a long time. We both agreed that it reminded us of the thrill of some of our first concerts, before everything became too familiar and before we - and it seemed everyone else in the audience - became too jaded. In contrast, this show had been almost innocent in its total passion and utter lack of self-consciouseness. Little did we know that the next day, the "Metal Music Festival" would prove to be even cooler... (to be continued)