kl rock city (part 2)

Unlike Beijing, where there are tons of metal bands playing live on a regular basis but almost none of them bother to put out albums, in Malaysia, there are tons of local bands writing, recording, and releasing albums, but there are very few live metal shows. Blame this on the government's last banning of "black metal" a little over a year ago and the subsequent raid of a metal fest in Kuala Lumpur and the detainment of over 300 of the fans and musicians there. Oddly, however, while Malaysian metal bands may be keeping to the studio and to the practice space for the time being, local and international hardcore bands seem to play out in KL almost every month.

In fact, during Maya's and my one week in the city, there was a big annual hardcore fest called Bridging Oceans 3, featuring Southeast Asian hardcore bands from Malaysia, Singapore (or "Spore," as the kids call it), the Philipines, and Indonesia, going down. I found out about it through this cool site, Malaysian Gigs, that I stumbled on while looking to see if there were any shows in KL while we were in town, and Maya and I showed up at the venue, the MCPA Theatre upstairs in the Chinese Assembly Hall - a rather official-looking convention center right by KL's Chinatown - bright and early at 1:30 in the afternoon this past Sunday, when the gig was set to go down. There was some kind of Chinese book fair taking place on the ground floor, which made for many awkward interactions between the black-clad and tattooed hardcore kids coming through to the fest and the very straightlaced book fair attendees. And on the second floor, right outside the MCPA theatre, there was a little exhibition in honor of Sun Yat-Sen, the first president of the Republic of China; all the hardcore kids seemed to find this hilarious, and many took photos of themselves giggling in front of a large photo of the communist leader.

In true DIY fashion, the gig didn't start until after 2:30, over an hour late, but other than that, there wasn't much that Maya and I could complain about - the show was pretty fucking awesome. The crowd was an amazing assortment of Malaysian, Indian, and Arab hardcore kids, including at least two girls in Muslim headscarves(!), many wearing shirts with "MYHC" (an acronym for "Malaysian hardcore" and a play off of "NYHC,"New York hardcore") emblazoned on them. As soon as the first band, a cool Malaysian quartet called Back on Track with an adorably nerdy-looking singer, hit the stage, the crowd went apeshit, moshing, circle-pitting, and skanking, sometimes with a weird synchronicity that suggested the violent choreographed dance routine of some bizarro hardcore boyband. Even more remarkable, however, was just how fucking friendly everyone was - kids smiled at us, said hello or welcome, some shook our hands, one complimented my Pantera T-shirt. And almost as soon as we showed up, a skinheaded Singaporean dude (named Yus) in a Madball basketball jersey came up to us, asked us where we were from (he was very impressed that we were from NYC since most of his favorite bands were NYHC groups like Sick of It All, Cro-Mags, and, well, Madball), and started introducing us to other people (turned out, Yus knew just about everyone there), telling us about the MYHC scene, and just generally shooting the shit. Later, in between sets, a random kid noticed that while everyone else in our general area, including Maya, had a chair to sit on, I was just squatting down on the floor, and in a truly unprecedented act of thoughtfulness, he lifted a chair from the stack behind him and placed it by me, gesturing for me to sit. He then chatted with Maya for about half an hour before excusing himself - "I have to go mosh," he said simply - and disppearing into the crowd.

As for the bands, they were totally solid, ranging from old school to new school, the more punk-inflected and the more metal-influenced. And some even cranked out a number of highly entertaining covers of songs that we actually knew, by bands including Hatebreed, Sick of It All, and Black Flag. The most popular act of the night had to be the Malaysian group xELEVENx, who had almost the entire audience piling on top of each other, trying to get to the mic to sing/shout along to every song which they clearly all knew by heart.



I ended up buying a CD of theirs (and a T-shirt of this "Spore" moshcore band, Overthrown), and Maya and I ended up hanging out at the show for nearly 7 hours, leaving only right before the final band, and only because we were absolutely starving. It turned out that My Chemical Romance were playing that night at the stadium almost exactly across the highway from the Chinese Assembly Hall, and when we walked to the nearby skytrain station after getting dinner in Chinatown, the My Chem show was just getting out. As we pushed disdainfully through the throngs of Malaysian emo kids (who were sopping wet because it had started raining midway through their outdoor concert - and probably because they'd been weeping along to every song), one of the kids, a young dude, looked at Maya and said as we passed, "So beautiful," followed by what sounded to both of us like, "Jew-bol," which Maya and I joked must be Malay for "Jewess" or something. I decided that while, yes, Maya is "so beautiful," she must seem extra-hot - like the forbidden fruit or something - as a Jewess in a Muslim land. Not to mention as a newly minted member of the MYHC scene among a sea of emo kids.