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.

kl rock city (part 1)

When Maya and I first started telling people at home about the trip we were about to embark on, some of our friends, family, and random acquaintances thought it sounded fucking cool; others thought we were fucking crazy; most probably thought the trip sounded fucking cool and we're fucking crazy. One of those who thought we were just crazy was Maya's cousin Felix. Felix is a few years older than we are, and he's a security guard for one of the building complexes down in our 'hood in Coney Island. He thought we were nuts, and in particular, he thought we were nuts to go to Malaysia, mostly because it's an officially Muslim country. "Be very careful," he warned us, adding to Maya: "And don't let anyone know that you're Jewish," advice seconded by Maya's mother.

So, right now we're in Kuala Lumpur, where we've been for the last 5 days or so, and as shit turns out, KL (as the locals refer to their hometown) definitely is Muslim - there are gorgeous mosques all over the city; women in headscarves and even full-on burkas walking everywhere, sitting in cafes, strolling through the malls; there are restuarants advertising things that no restuarant in the States would wisely advertise, like "Iraqi food" and "Iranian cuisine" - but it's also, well, not. For instance, Christmas is fucking huge here - there are decorations everywhere, carols playing in the shopping centers; it's fucking bizarre. And most of the men that we see walking with the women in burkas are dressed like total wiggers (or "miggers," or whatever the term would be). And the city is actually insanely multicultural, full of Southeast Asians, Chinese, Indians, Arabs, and even the occasional whitey.

If anyone thought we had reason to watch our backs in Malaysia (and they did), it has turned out to be quite the contrary: Kuala Lumpur has proven to be the friendliest city we've visited yet (and the safest and cleanest after Tokyo and Kyoto). Everyone smiles at us, random people say hello (almost everyone speaks really good English, which is the country's second offical language), and we've had almost absurdly congenial conversations with Malay taxi drivers, Bangladeshi waiters, the Iraqi dude at the internet cafe...

And we've eaten the best food - hummus and kabobs, grilled lamb chops, dim sum, "chicken rice" (which, as the name suggests is just chicken and rice but so perfectly prepared that we've eaten it almost everyday for lunch at a restuarant where we've become quick regulars) - and even more impressively, have yet to get sick (a first for any Southeast Asian country).

But maybe best of all, Kuala Lumpur is rock 'n' roll as all fuck. This is actually a very big surprise, not only because Malaysia is Muslim but because the country's Muslim government's National Fatwa Council has gone out of its way in recent years to ban "black metal" - by which they actually meant any heavy music listened to or played by people in black T-shirts, not just the church-burning, corpse-painted brand of metal commonly called by that name - in the country (for more on the bannings, click here). And yet, on our second day in KL, Maya and I went off to find this metal record store, Nebiula HM Shop, which is listed on the metaltravelguide website; we ended up at this shopping center, Campbell Complex, off the beaten tourist track, and on the 1st floor, which had not just the one, but four metal-oriented stores. Nebiula is the best of these, and it's run by this awesome dude Jaei, who's the vocalist of one of Malaysia's leading bands, Sil Khannaz. Maya and I talked to him for an hour or so, as he played us music by his band and a variety of other Malaysian bands (he had a good two shelves full of albums by local bands, way more than we've seen anywhere else on this trip, except Japan) and told us about the scene. He said that the Malaysian government has been "very difficult," and that after the ban on "black metal" (strangely, most of the local bands, even now, seem to play in that actual style), much of the scene had to be rebuilt from the ground up. I ended up buying almost 10 CDs, and he ended up giving me another 4 or so as "free gifts."

After Nebiula, we stopped by the other stores, and in one, we had the most hilarious interaction with the totally adorable middle-aged proprietress, who walked us through her shop's metal section, describing various products with the sweetest little voice: "Ooh, this band, they play death/grind. Very nice." "Slayer, 'Live Undead' T-shirt. Very old-school vibe." We were giggling almost uncontrollably the whole time, and Maya eventually asked the woman if she actually listens to metal, and she explained that metal is very popular and her customers always ask for that kind of music so she has to stock it, and she started listening so she would know about it and that she did like a lot of it. "Some people think it is just noise, but I think some is actually very nice," she said. Maya told her that she was a great saleswoman, but that the whole experience was very crazy, Maya said, like "having my mother trying to sell me metal," which is pretty much how I felt about it, too. (To be continued)

do do that voodoo

For all of you in suspense about Eveline and the bloody ghost (in other words, all of you), here's an update - and one of the most fucking hilarious stories I've heard in a long time - she emailed me a few days ago:

so yeah, the ghost called (like 2 weeks ago) to tell me that the band [Voodoo Kungfu] was playing nov 6 (last friday) so i FINALLY got to go hang out with him, & it was quite a night.

i got my friend jamila to come with, & jamila brought her friend sarabeth. so we get there, pay the cover, & go in to the bar. i see the drummer but not the ghost. so after buying a drink & standing around for a few moments, i'm like, hmm, what am i supposed to do? so then i text the ghost that i'm there & he calls back being like, where are you, i'm here too. some confusion ensues (what with that whole little i-don't-speak-chinese thing) but we wind up meeting at the entrance to the bar. then he starts to go talk to the little window lady to let me in for free & i'm like, oh i already paid the cover. & he looks really disappointed & is like, oh no, you did? & i was like, yeah it's okay no worries. but inside i'm thinking something more like - you idiot, you could have told me AHEAD of time to call you before going in.

so then he's like, want to go backstage? so i go fetch my friends & we're like, okay we're going back stage. much to my surprise going back stage means going up onto the stage & into this little door in the back of the stage. & this btw is a really nice club, 2 floors, really great sound system, not a little dive like club 13. so yeah, we climb the stairs onto the stage, go through a door in the back, and walk into....the most brightly lit room in the world. it is like stark white, like it looks like it was painted yesterday, & everyone is sitting against the wall & there are 2 fluorescent lights overhead. i.e. a room full of dreadlocked chinese guys & their bored looking girlfriends all look up at us the moment we walk in & we're like, ack. & it's a small room & we can't totally speak chinese and - yeah. super embarrassing. of course the chinese guys, being chinese guys, jump up & insist that we sit on the couch even though it basically means they have nowhere to sit in this tiny little room, & we keep insisting no, & there's this long period where everybody's standing and insisting & blah blah & finally the ghost says in extremely loud, accented english, "puh-lease-uh sit down-uh!" so finally we all sit (with the guys who gave up their seats now perched awkwardly on various chair arms or for the ghost, on the coffee table) & . . . silence.

crickets chirp.

me, jamila & sarabeth kind of feel like we're on stage with a ring of chinese strangers watching us, all of them looking not quite unfriendly but also seeming to be thinking, "who the fuck are these people?"

there's a tubby, dorky looking guy next to me playing guitar & finally the ghost is like, give that to me. so then the ghost starts playing guitar. as jamila whispered to me, he was obviously feeling really shy/awkward & didn't know what to do with himself or how to talk to me so he just sat against the wall across the room like a teenage boy playing guitar.

okay this is getting way too long. basically we finally managed to chat a little bit, although a lot of it was pretty awkward because we sort of had to talk loudly across the room with the other people in the room on either side looking on, as if watching a tennis match. there was a lot of like, one person says something, the other person says huh?, we both scoot forward & lean way forward to be nearer each other to hear better, statement is repeated, statement is answered, we both sit back against the wall again, he starts playing guitar again, we ponder what to say next.

oh and, after that initial long awkward period of not talking & him playing guitar & looking down & me looking at the ceiling & around, etc., when he FINALLY spoke to me, do you know what the first thing he said was?

he asked me if i know bon jovi.

ok it might translate better as something like, "in america, have you met bon jovi?" but still.

i said i don't know bon jovi. then it occured to me that actually i have seen bon jovi, once, when he sang a song at this john kerry fundraiser concert at radio city music hall that i went to for free through work. so i tell him, oh i have seen him sing like one song from really far away. and then the ghost is like, "was he..." and i expect that sentence to end in "good" but instead he says, "good-looking?" i'm like, huh? oh. "uhhh, yeah i guess he's good-looking. i mean, he's getting a little old but, uhh, yeah, sure."

he said 2 more english phrases over the course of the night - "do you speak chinese?" (to jamila), and "tonight i break your fucking face," which is apparently a limp bizkit lyric.

at some point the opening band started playing & we're like, oh shit. we can't get out of this room now without walking onto the stage. at some point my friend jason & some others arrive & text me & jamila, "where are you?" & i have to write back, "we're trapped backstage. seriously."

at some point the singer & his girlfriend (i think) walk in & look at us kind of like, "who the hell are these strange people sitting in our backstage area?" & then disappear into the bathroom & then come back out & perch somewhere awkward (what with there being no place to sit thanks to me, jamila & sarabeth.)

the ghost managed to get less adolescent-boy-shy & even managed to come sit by me to chat for a bit. however, this involved him sharing the armchair with the tubby, dorky, but very nice guy next to me, who turned out to be a friend of his from back home, & the tubby friend would like stroke the ghost's arm or rest his hand on the ghost's back & stuff. & from my low angle it kind of looked like the ghost was sitting on tubby guy's lap while tubby guy affectionately stroked his arm & back.

tubby & i talked a lot, but because of his heavy accent when saying band names in english, it was mostly,
"do you like [insert name of band.]"
"huh?"
"[name of band.]"
"say that one more time?"
"[name of band.]"
"wait - spell that?"
"[name of band, spelled out in english.]"
"ohhhh! yeah i like them."
*repeat entire conversation several more times, inserting a different band each time.*

oh & it's also funny because whenever the ghost addressed me (by calling out across the room) he would say my chinese name, & since i never actually use my chinese name (i only gave it to him that night because he was gonna store my name in his phone & i assumed it would be harder to communicate my english name than just tell him the chinese characters to put in) there'd be like a split second where i didn't quite register that he was saying my name. so he'd begin a sentence "zhao yi" and it'd be like - beat of silence - oh wait that's me! ha.

oh and the BEST part of the night. talking to the drummer. I LOVE HIM. he has like the BEST personality in the world. he also, as i discovered when i went & sat by him & saw him up close, has one little patch of hair below his lip that is basically a soul patch dreadlock. yes, there is a tuft of hair below his lip that is dreaded into like a PERFECT cylinder that isn't any narrower at the bottom than at the top.

but so, i went over & was like, "i have to ask you - how do you know how to do mongolian throat singing?! where did you study it?" & in a nutshell, he was basically like, "it's the funniest thing - i never studied mongolian throat singing anywhere, i just kind of discovered out of the blue one day that i could do it!" but the explanation was a lot longer than that. THEN he's like, "when i was little there was this movie (or maybe cartoon?) that i used to watch, and it had this big scary monster on it who would yell in a really low growly voice, and i liked to imitate him. so i think doing that all the time built up my vocal chords so i can do mongolian throat singing now!" & then i *think* he said that his girlfriend is mongolian & gave him a cd of throat singing once, about 3 years ago, & he listened to it & was just kind of like, hey i bet i can do that. and he could. how fucking AMAZING and hilarious is that? also the singer & one of the other members of the band are taking throat singing lessons now from some old mongolian sage who lives by the lake that you guys were staying near. they're all also now trying to learn the kind of throat singing where you split your voice & can sing 2 notes at once!

also the drummer is from yunnan (very south of china), which explains why he's so short, hee.

oh and the mummy? totally hot. okay well maybe not to most people, but i found him completely hot w/o his makeup on. sadly he seemed to have a girlfriend. oh but at one point he like stood up right in front of me in the middle of the room & was doing all these big elaborate stretches and deep bends and swinging his arms around and stuff. like at one point i look up & his ass is right in my face because he's touching his toes.

& then of course when they finally performed they rocked and were amazing and it was even better than at club 13 because the sound system at this other new bar was AMAZING. and then of course, after the show the ghost & i are talking (well, barely, still not so good at the whole, how to talk to a girl thing) & this hungarian guy comes up to us and says he's a filmmaker & the band was awesome & do they have a cd & how can he get in touch with them, what's their website, etc. (i was translating for him.) and of course the ghost is just like, huh? cd? website? why on earth would a POPULAR METAL BAND have any of those things? so i'm like, they basically have nothing. then the hungarian filmmaker is like, don't you have ANYTHING? can i email you? how can i get in touch with you guys? finally the ghost comes up with the helpful tidbit that they can go onto baidu (the chinese equivalent of google) and search their name in chinese. uhhh, thanks. the guy presses some more and then finally the ghost is like, well i guess i can give him my phone number. so we wrote down his number for the guy & the guy said he had a translator he could get to call & talk for him. god it just KILLS me that these guys could actually be pretty big if they like, you know, had a manager who was with-it or someone who could speak english working wiht them or something but, nope, none of that. although on the other hand it's really cool that, given their apparent lack of any hitting-it-big dreams, they i guess do this for fun? and for like ,years, right? at least however many years it took the singer's hair to grow from that awful 'do in the DVD to the length it is now.

OH and i forgot to mention - the drummer is in 2 other bands. one is a pop rock band and one is . . . brace yourselves . . .

a flamenco band.

yup.

rock shopping

Last Wednesday Maya and I decided to try and find this metal/hard-rock store in Hanoi, called Coi Xuong Rock Shop, that I had found on that metaltravelguide.com website. The address I had was "So 3 ngo 154 Doi Can," translating to "number 3 alley 154 Doi Can Street); I found Doi Can Street on our map easily - it's a big street not far from the Ho Chi Minh Museum and Memorial; hopefully the alley would make itself apparent once we got to that main drag. So we headed down there, away from the hectic tourist-dominated commercialism of the Old Quarter and into what turned out to be a cool, almost whitey-free, and very authentic-feeling neighborhood. The Vietnamese were still selling shit on the streets, but to each other, instead of predominantly to foreign sightseers. And the street was still jampacked with motorbikes but somehow their drivers didn't seem quite as prepared to mow you down. The vibe was not only a lot chiller but also more friendly - the locals were clearly less concerned with separating us from our money and more intrigued by our mere presence.

As we strolled down Doi Can, we saw an awesome designer respiratory mask hanging in one store and stopped in to buy it. Two little girls - one, maybe 8; the other, maybe 4 - were the only people manning (or "little-girling") the establishment. The older girl handled the transaction shyly, while her younger sister (I presume) waved hello, stared at us, then waved goodbye. Outside, kids were just getting out of school and swarmed the sidewalks, shouting "Hello!," waving, and asking us where we were from and what our names were.

When we finally found 154 Doi Can, the number marked a dark, narrow alley which would have been slightly menacing if it hadn't been for the red-cheeked old woman cheerfully eating at a small table at its entrance. We passed her and wound down a blind corner in the alley. On the other side we found door number 3, which looked exactly like the door of a residence and nothing like the door of a business - until I noticed the small cardboard sign with "Rock Shop" written on it in blocky marker letters sticking out from the wall. Maya and I exchanged confused and amused glances, then I knocked on the door. No response. I knocked again. Same result. Then I heard a sound behind us and turning around, noticed an open doorway into a very dark room in which a man sat in the shadows, smoking a water pipe. He was gesturing for me to ring the doorbell (which I hadn't even noticed). Almost simultaneously, a woman passing behind us in the alley, gestured likewise. I hit the bell a few times, but still no answer.

As Maya and I retreated, somewhat disappointedly, out of the alley, the old woman at the corner accosted us in Vietnamese, either having seen the doorway we were knocking on or guessing where we wanted to go from our look. Seeing that we weren't comprehending a word of what she was telling us, she held up all 10 fingers, and then 5 fingers. "Back in 15 minutes?" Maya asked. The woman didn't understand, but she then held up 6 fingers. "Back by 6?" I asked. The two gestures didn't jibe, since it was about 4:50 at this point, but we thanked the woman for her efforts in communication and decided to continue our stroll down Doi Can and then swing by again on our way back to our hotel.

A little farther down the strip, we noticed on the other side of the street this rather amazing-looking shrine, which was all the more striking because of the way it emerged from the otherwise urban landscape while still looking like it belonged there. I asked Maya to cross the street so I could take a photo of her in front of the structure. As she went to do so, I pulled the camera from the bag and checked its settings; next thing I know, I look up for Maya and she's crossing the street with an old, bent woman in some sort of ethnic, turban-like headwrap holding her arm, walking with her through the whizzing traffic. Maya will later tell me that the old lady's teeth were black. Once they reached the other side of the street, I fully expected the woman to disengage, but she kept walking with Maya arm-in-arm, chatting to her (as Maya would tell me) about god-knows-what in Vietnamese the whole time. It was only after Maya effectively communicated that I was standing on the other side, waiting to take a picture of her, that the old woman went off on her way.

Here's Maya and her friend in front of the temple:

A closer view:
Soon after this stellar interaction, we decided to turn back and stop by the Rock Shop alley again, with hopes that the owner had returned. But when we arrived, we gestured to the woman, who was still sitting and eating at the corner, if the propietor was back, but she shook her head. So we thanked her again for her help and started to head back toward our hotel, with plans to try again some other day.

We had walked maybe 5 minutes, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a middle-aged dude in a crisp white shirt on a motorbike, which he had apparently ridden onto the sidewalk. I immediately tried to brush him away, assuming that he was one of the "motobai" drivers trying to get me to pay for a ride. (I think I forgot to mention earlier that Hanoi is absolutely full of motobike taxi-drivers who are constantly harassing you for a ride by calling out "Motobai?!" or waving at you or grunting at you, etc.) But he was persistent and when I finally turned to look at him, he pointed back in the direction that we had come from and said, "Rock Shop," in halting English. "The Rock Shop owner is back?" I asked. He nodded, and with us following on foot, he sped off back toward the store.

When we finally got back down into the alley, door number 3 was wide open, revealing the living room and kitchen of a humble abode. The motorbike dude was standing in there waiting for us (he, it turned out, was the proprietor), and on either side of him were two racks of black T-shirts, which we soon discovered were metal and hard-rock tees from bands ranging from Nirvana to Death. The owner dude didn't speak English at all really, but this didn't stop him from flipping through T-shirts with Maya, phonetically reading out the names of the various bands: "Me-tal-lica. Se-pul-tur-a. Cra-dle of Filth. Link-un..." "Linkin Park," Maya would help him out occasionally. It was pee-your-pants hilarious. After a little while a whole group of teenage boys in their school uniforms rumbled into the shop, clearly shocked - and excited - to find two whities in the store. They talked to the owner in Vietnamese and he opened up this glass case for them so they could inspect a variety of spiked, black leather gauntlets. Maya asked the kids, though a combination of carefully enunciated English and hand gestures, if there was anywhere to see rock shows in Hanoi, but they all shook their heads and laughed. I ended up buying a Pantera T-shirt and a CD by a Vietnamese rock band called Flashback, who, we are positive, are gonna suck big time, but it was the only CD the shop had and I wanted to "support the scene, man." Plus it cost all of 10,000 dong, or about 70 cents. Here's a little video tour of the shop, which I shot after making my purchases - you'll see the mural that was on one wall of a band rocking out and the slogan "Heaven from Hell," written out in band names.



The one thing I wished I had captured in this vid - but didn't notice until after filming - was the portrait of Ho Chi Minh hanging on the living room wall right over one of the racks of rock tees. In a similarly absurd and amazing juxposition, we saw, as we walked back to our hotel from the Rock Shop, a small square dominated by a towering statue of Lenin; a group of Vietnamese teenage boys were practicing their breakdancing right in front of the monument, and honestly, they fucking ruled. So, as the sun went down, Maya and I sat on the curb and watched them B-boying, thinking what an awesome afternoon it had been - and how Lenin's jaw would be on the ground right now, if it were actually him and not just a statue, looking on with us.

mao metal than you can handle (part 2)

Tuesday Maya and I returned to the 13 club for the final night of the "Metal Music Festival" with Eveline and our new friend from Seattle, Audrey, in tow. Eveline, it turns out, has been going to an impressive number of metal shows since moving to China, so this was nothing new for her; as for Audrey, though at first she seemed to have no interest in metal or in joining us at the show, she ended up being very easily persuaded to tag along ("So you wanna go?" asked Maya; "Sure," said Audrey).

The club was pretty much the same smokey, scuzzy scene as the day before, except slightly more decked out, care of the enormous Dimebag Darrell (R.I.P.) banner hanging over pretty much of the whole left side of the venue. Pantera may just be the biggest metal band in China, judging from the number of T-shirts, caps, etc. brandishing their name that we saw on both fans and band members at the Fest, and cheesy as it might sound, it was kind of heartwarming to see the late, great Dimebag's face smiling over the night's proceedings.

As we stepped into the club, a band either called Oxygen Can or Maul Heavily (I'm not sure) was bashing out some hilariously derivative but totally (albeit somewhat ironically) enjoyable nu-metal. Think a mashup of Korn, Slipknot, and Linkin Park, plus a couple ska breakdowns. The band even looked the part - from the two dudes with dreadlocks (the lead singer and one of the guitarists) to the drummer and percussionist, the latter banged away at a bunch of oil drums and a keg or two.



Later in their set, they even broke out a radio-ready power ballad, which Maya swayed and emoted along to.

As the next band started to set up, Eveline got a very excited look on her face. "I think this is my band," she said, her eyes wide with hope. See, about 6 months ago she had sent me via YouTube some video footage she'd shot of a performance of this band she thought was called 01. They incorporated Mongolian influences (throat-singing, and an instrument called the horse-head fiddle) into their music, and they dressed like Chinese demons of a sort (the bassist, like a mummy, wrapped in guaze; the guitarist, like a blood-spattered ghost). The clips she'd sent me were grainy and lo-fi, but the band looked and sounded awesome.

Thing was, the band in this spot on the schedule was called Voodoo Kungfu, not 01, and in fact, Eveline was under the impression that 01 had broken up. But as soon as the bassist took the stage - in blood-sprayed mummy garb - Eveline knew that rumors of the band's demise had been greatly exaggerated. "I love the mummy!" she said (the first of many times that she would repeat this mantra through the night). The band started in atmospherically, with the drummer throat-singing while the horse-head fiddle-player pulled a haunting melody from his instrument's two strings. After building the tension to a fever pitch, the rest of the band crashed in with some ferocious doom riffage and feral roars, courtesy of their burly singer, who wore a long, ornate Mongolian robe. Eveline, Maya, and I, and even Audrey - as well as the rest of the crowd - were completely enthralled.



By the end of their set (which ruled), their frontman had stripped topless, had been splattered with (presumably stage) blood, spit on him by the mummy/bassist, and was ranting like a rabid howler monkey. Dude, it was awesome.

Now, the one thing that Maya and I had been bummed about the night before was that none of the bands seemed to be selling merch, and I really wanted some Chinese-metal-band shwag to bring home with me. So when Maya spotted 01/Voodoo Kungfu's guitarist, "the bloody ghost" (though very much out of costume by now), sitting outside the club all by himself, she dragged Eveline along and made her ask him if his band had any CDs for sale. I was standing a bit aways with Audrey so I didn't see this myself, but according to Maya, the guitarist gave them a look like they were crazy (Eveline would later explain that there's so much piracy in China, that a lot of Chinese bands don't really bother putting out official CDs). But he and Eveline struck up a conversation (he didn't speak any English), and the next thing we knew the two of them were exchanging cellphone numbers!

Later in the cab back to our respective homes, Eveline explained that the guitarist/bloody ghost had said that the band didn't have CDs but did have a DVD and that he would be willing to sell one to us, so they had exchanged numbers. Eveline said she thought he'd said something about maybe he could even come by himself and drop the DVD off, but again, she only really understands 30 to 40% of shit, so who really knows. We immediately decided that he must be hitting on her, or that maybe he'd misinterpreted "Do you have any CDs for sale?" as a weird sideways come-on - since everyone knows Chinese bands don't have CDs (see previous explanation). I said, "Too bad you're only going to use him to get to the mummy," and we all joked that she was going to end up being 01/Voodoo Kungfu's Yoko Ono and break up the band.

Then a few days later, I get a text from Eveline: "The bloody ghost just texted me! I cant understand it but hes basically like whats up. It ended w a smiley face. Bwahahahahaha!!!"

Basically they've been texting ever since, and tonight he might even join us for drinks. We'll see. Maya and I have plotted out the 01/Voodoo Kungfu VH1: Behind the Music storyline - Eveline starts dating the bloody ghost, I come back to the States and rave about how awesome his band is to my metal label contacts, the band gets signed and puts out a critically acclaimed debut album. Then on the eve of the band's highly anticipated first U.S. tour, Eveline breaks the news that she actually has had feeling for the mummy all along, the band breaks up. Years later Eveline writes a tell-all memoir called I Loved the Mummy.

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)

a long sigh

Our last real day in Japan (Wednesday; we fly out tomorrow for China at 9am or so), and needless to say, there were many loose ends to wrap up, souvenirs to buy and mail (dealing with the Japanese post office literally gave Maya and I both headaches), huge and yet somehow not-quite-big-enough backpacks to pack, and, oh, tons of shit I'm probably forgetting and maybe we forgot to do.

But this afternoon, instead of dealing with all the above, we 1) learned that the story oft-repeated in the States - or at least in the Revolver office - that in Japan you can buy girls' used panties from vending machines is partly an urban legend (you can't buy them from vending machines) and partly true (you definitely can buy them from the many sex shops scattered around Tokyo). In the back of the sex shop Maya and I decided to peruse while sourvenir shopping, we found a back corner covered in little baggies, each stuffed with a pair of folded panties alongside small polaroids of a Japanese girl wearing said undergarment. Shit was expensive - like, 3,500 yen (approx. $35) each - or else I would have bought a pair for every member of the Revolver staff. Then again, as Maya pointed out, if you're the kind of person who has to go to a store to pay money for a female's used undies, 35 bucks probably sounds like a bargain.

After making this discovery, we 2) hung out with vocalist-keyboardist-songwriter Mirai and vocalist-saxophonist Mika (a.k.a. Mikannibal) of the awesome Japanese metal band Sigh. I had met Mirai briefly in the States a little while ago - he came into the Revolver office to write and record an original short song on the spot for the magazine's now-defunct "Unit" page (click here to hear the creepy little ditty), and when I knew I was going to Tokyo, I got in touch. As for Mika, see below what she looks like onstage - needless to say, I would never have worked up the balls to get in touch with her. And that's before Maya talked to her and discovered that she's a 3rd-year PHD student in physics!


Mirai and I had arranged to meet outside the Hard Rock Cafe in Oeno station - because that seemed like really the cheesiest place we could possibly meet - and from there, Maya and I followed Mirai and Mika on the subway and along a maze of streets on a personal tour of Tokyo's metal record stores. Most were Disk Union shops, while one (located in the Shinjuku district) was excllently named No Remorse Tokyo and it had an amazing variety of metal T-shirts, including a Gallhammer tee that I almost bought, except that it was gray-on-gray and I had seen a kid wearing a black-on-black one of the same design at the Mono/Envy show and that looked so much cooler that I just couldn't shell out the 2,100 yen (approx. $21) for the lesser gray version. (I did, however, buy a CD by Gallhammer frontwoman Vivian Slaughter's other band, Congenital Hell.)

I had actually been working on a Gallhammer story for Revolver before I left for this trip, and had even sent email questions to Vivian Slaughter almost a month before Maya and my date of departure, but she had never responded with answers and I had had to kill the piece. Mika, who is friends with Vivian, explained that Vivian really barely knows any English at all, and that she has had to resort to using Yahoo translator when trying to answer English-language interview questions. Plus, according to both Mika and Mirai, Vivian is really crazy, like she-should-be-taking-her-meds- but-isn't-and-she-gets-benefits-from-the-government crazy. Which only makes her cooler in my book.

In between record stores, Mirai and Mika took Maya and I to this insane noodle shop down some alleys by this almost dried-up canal. It was basically just a bar with space for many 20 people around it, and two greasy-looking cooks/servers scrambling over huge steaming vats of broth and ramen in the center. Mika ordered for all of us with a very mischievious look on her face, and when Maya's and my late lunches/early dinners arrived, we knew why. The meal consisted of a normal sized bowl of broth with strips of pork and bamboo shoots and pieces of scallion - and then an absolutely ginormous, I mean Godzilla-sized bowl of noodles that would easily feed a family of 5 in any of the other countries we are about to visit. While Maya and I looked at each other nervously, Mirai proceeded to noisily slurp up his entire portion (in Japan you're supposed to consume your noodles while producing maximum slurping noise - it's only polite) in about, oh, 5 or 6 gulps. Mika wasn't far beyond (though she had ordered a smaller bowl of noodle for herself - because, even though she's already enviably slendor, she says she's dieting. Ultimately, Mirai and Mika left the premises and waited outside for us - in order to make room at the bar for the steady stream of customers coming in - while Maya and I tried not to humiliate ourselves completely with our meager noodle-eating skills. Eventually we gave up and staggered out, bellies engorged. "You have to eat fast before your stomach knows that you're already full," Mirai explained his power-noodle-pounding technique later.

But while Maya and I feel like we've had to consume Japan very quickly over the last 2 weeks, I can definitely say that we have not had our fill. And when we bid Mirai and Mika farewell later that evening - knowing that we would have to bid Japan itself sayonara soon the next morning - we did so with full intention of returning sometime not too faraway.

green with envy, greener from mono

Last night, after our big day exploring a few of Tokyo's neighborhoods, Maya and I met up with this dude named Jumbo, who just happens to be Relapse Records' man in Japan. We meet at the Ebisu JR station; I tell him I'll be wearing a Death T-shirt, he tells me I can recognize him by his High on Fire tee. Besides his HoF shirt, the guy has an awesome "metal" beard, and unlike the many people who don't live up to their own awesome beards, Jumbo rocks.

He's put Maya and I are the list for the Mono/Envy show at the Ebisu venue Liquid Room, a gig commemorating the club's 3rd anniversary. While Envy are a killer band, I much prefer their classic more manic, Converge-esque sound to their more recent Mogwa/Isis-like excursions, and unfortunately their main set tonight is heavy with newer material. Maya and I have had an exhausting last 48-hours or so, and we both nod off at times (actually, I think Maya full-on sleeps through most of their set). But when they come out for their encore and rock three older songs, the crowd of metalheads, hardcore kids, hipsters, and a surprising number of gaijin, which until then has been rather staidly bobbing their heads, goes nuts - a bleached-blond Japanese kid goes crowdsurfing, and Envy frontman Tetsuya Fukagawa jumps off the stage and throws himself, screaming, into the enbrace of the front row. Now, why wasn't their whole set like that?

The night, in my opinion, belongs to Mono, who themselves specialize in that same Mogwai/Isis style of ambient, quiet-to-very fucking loud "post-metal" (as we call it stupidly in rock journolist land), but when they do it right (which is often), they kill. It doesn't hurt, too, that chick bassist Tamaki (wo)mans centerstage wearing a semi-sheer nightgown-ish dress that makes her look one part seductive rock goddess, one part that little-girl ghost from The Ring.



Check Mono out when they tour the U.S. this fall opening for High on Fire, who are putting out what is in my not-so-humble opinion the best album of the year, Death is This Communion on Relapse. Speaking of which, Jumbo hooks me up with a Japanese version of that disc, as well as Japanese versions of a shitload of other recent Relapse releases, many with exclusive bonus tracks. Like I said, dude rocks... though I don't know how/where I'm gonna jam this shit in my already bursting backpack for the next four months...

a room without room

Our room is Tokyo is, to use Maya's phraseology, "Awww, so cute!" It is, in other words, tiny. That's the rep of Japanese hotel rooms: They're small as fuck but efficient and, if you have the proper frame of mind, cozy. Our room in the Oak Hotel in Ueno fits this description to a tee. There's a hard but not uncomfortable futon matress tucked into the corner, floor space that's maybe two-and-a-half times that matress, a TV set that's basically just a 15-inch computer monitor, a seemingly miniaturized chair and desk, what looks like a child's tea maker, two truly minuscule trash cans (think the proportions of a big Coke bottle), and best of all, an ensuite bathroom the size of an airplane bathroom plus a tub/shower that I have to duck down to fit into (it also has a myterious sulfurous smell). Here's Maya looking "aww, so cute" herself in one of the traditional robes that come with the room, showing off said bathroom's (lack of) space.



The damn dwarfish room has done its job so far though. Our first night here we were lucky enough to have Japan hit by a major typhoon. Insane winds howled outside all night and torrential rain pelted the windows and walls. But our room was quiet and homey, and when Maya passed out around 8pm Japan-time, and I followed, about 2 hours later, we slept like bears in winter.

less than a month to go...

...before the ol' lady and I head off on our completely insane 4-month trip/adventure/trial-by-fire through Japan, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand. (Just typing that ridiculously long list of countries makes my skin tingle with trepidation and impatience.) The anticipation is almost unbearable. Every day, every hour is a rollercoaster of emotions - mostly extreme excitment (I'm going to see Ankor Wat, Mount Fuji, the Barrier Reef, the Great fucking Wall!) dropping suddenly into extreme fear (of exotic diseases and...even worse exotic diseases). Will this trip just fucking start already?!

It's been a long time coming, a dream to see the world that I can remember having since I was a little kid, finally set into the beginning babysteps of real motion a few years ago - I had money saved, a job I was itching to leave, a then-girlfriend (now wife) who was herself free and eager for such an adventure; it seemed like the right time to "just do it, dammit." Then I got a phone call from out of the blue - the national hard-rock/metal mag I had been freelance writing for, Revolver, was looking for a new editor and the job was basically mine for the taking. As a longtime metalhead for whom writing is one of very few actual skills, how could I turn down the gig? I couldn't. And so the dream went on hold.

But in some ways it was an easy dream to put on hold. It's the kind of dream almost everyone has, but few people actually live, even though all it really takes is some savings (a surprising small amount, too) and the courage/will to actually make the leap. Recently when I told one of my coworkers what I was about to do, he said in a resigned tone of voice, "Yeah, my wife and I have talked about doing something like that...but we never will." Like I said, it's an all too easy dream to keep as just a dream forever.

But as far as I'm concerned, that is no way to live. Maybe I've just listened to too much metal, because if metal is about anything to me, it's about living life to its fullest and not sacrificing one's own personal ideals/dreams, not conforming to the whims of the flock, and not satisfying oneself with a mundane existence. So even though I know I just wrote an article in Revolver called "Metal Made Me Do It," about all the people who have used heavy music as an excuse for the fucked-up shit they themselves are responsible for, if this trip somehow turns out to have been a bad idea (i.e., I come back with the Dengue fever or some shit), I think I'm gonna use that excuse myself. ("Doctor, metal made me do it.") But if it turns out to be my dream finally come true (which I have a feeling in my gut, it will), well, then that's just because the ol' lady and I are two metal-as-hell badasses with the balls to actually seize the motherfucking day.