MP3 Monday: Blast Beats from the 'Far East'
By Morgan Short, May 7th, 2012 | In Nightlife
MP3 Monday is a weekly SmartShanghai column, serving up mp3s from bands living and making music in China (or coming to China, or thinking about coming to China, or whatever). Copyright holders: if you would like your song removed, please email us here, and we'll honor your request promptly.
Bit of a lull this week for live music in Shanghai, coming off these festivals and stuff, which is good because, goddamn, just so sick of music -- listening to it, seeing it, buying tickets to it. Enough already. Music is so over. So sick of rock bands. So sick of Mr. DJ.
So this week, here’s a little intro on new comp, Core in China. Enjoy it from the safety of your own home. No cover charge.
King Ly Chee
RockinChina.com Releases “Core in China”
A lot of people get all annoyed at the proliferation of dance music genres in critical discourse in the last two decades or so -- deep house, progressive house, organic house, tech house, dubstep, bro step, this music fuckin’ blows-step -- but the other end of the spectrum, heavy metal, is just as guilty of burying their music in a dizzying profusion of genre non sequitur. To wit: the “–core” modifier. Metalcore, mathcore, grindcore, deathcore, Satan help us, “nintendocore”.
Basically, the “-core” modifier on the various genres of metal refers to metal bands adopting certain aesthetic and ideological concerns from early waves of American hardcore punk into whatever base off-shoot of heavy metal. That’s the simplistic, dummies version. It’s an equation: metal genre X + hardcore punk = X-core. Early general concerns of the paternal genre, “metalcore”: CoC, Suicidal Tendencies, DRI, and also Biohazard, Cro-Mags, VoD, Earth Crisis, and Converge, through to Hatebreed. Basically, equal love for the chugga-chugga raw power of Slayer, (good) Pantera, and (early) Metallica, along with youth crew social consciousness and the us-against-them, unity-through-hardcore of bands like Bad Brains and Black Flag. Add 20 odd years of bands -- tens of thousands of them -- six or seven more waves of what “hardcore” is, milk, eggs, and sugar. Stir and bake until blackened and here we are today: 80 different metal genres with the modifier “-core”.
So that’s what “core” is, sort of. It’s pretty much that or a bunch of angry dudes in camo shorts, whichever.
Shut Up! Shut Down!
Now, here’s Core in China, a CD compilation sampler -- a free, digital-only release -- organized by the website RockinChina.com to showcase bands all over this country that identify with one or several of portmanteau genre labels with “core” in them. At the risk of misrepresenting things and generalizing things, a vast majority of heavy music in China is largely encountered and created in the shadow of thrash metal -- Slayer, brah, and Metallica -- along with some basic encounter with “punk” as exemplified by Sex Pistols or Ramones or whatever back in the day, and emo/screamo today. Thus, a lot of the newer, younger heavy bands, a lot of them showcased on this comp, combine that intrinsic experience in basic thrash and punk with some conception and personal permutation of a contemporary “core” genre, towards an end product in which the bands are motivated towards making music that is modern, still unwritten, wide open, and, at the same time, ideologically relevant to personal experience.
This is the new heavy music in this country. This is the new metal, the new punk, the new whatevercore. The new beat. The new beat. The new beat. Or at least 20 bands’ version of it.
Ordnance
At the end of the day, the genre tags are less important, and are there merely to provide cursory in-roads to what you’re listening to. Genre tags can even be a disservice sometimes because dudes in certain metal genres super hate, hate, hate dudes in other metal genres. Anyone up for a black metal versus death metal gang war? But it’s a comp so of course some bands won’t be your thing, and hopefully, some bands you’ll like and want to hear more from. Here’s three as a quick taster.
And you can download the whole 20-song disc for free -- totally for free -- at the band camp. Congrats to Azchael and Yang for putting it all together -- mammoth undertaking indeed. A Mastodon undertaking?
Eeesh.
If you want more information on the comp and all the bands appearing on it, click on this link to RockinChina.com.
Cover image is King Ly Chee
Bit of a lull this week for live music in Shanghai, coming off these festivals and stuff, which is good because, goddamn, just so sick of music -- listening to it, seeing it, buying tickets to it. Enough already. Music is so over. So sick of rock bands. So sick of Mr. DJ.
So this week, here’s a little intro on new comp, Core in China. Enjoy it from the safety of your own home. No cover charge.
King Ly Chee
RockinChina.com Releases “Core in China”
A lot of people get all annoyed at the proliferation of dance music genres in critical discourse in the last two decades or so -- deep house, progressive house, organic house, tech house, dubstep, bro step, this music fuckin’ blows-step -- but the other end of the spectrum, heavy metal, is just as guilty of burying their music in a dizzying profusion of genre non sequitur. To wit: the “–core” modifier. Metalcore, mathcore, grindcore, deathcore, Satan help us, “nintendocore”.
Basically, the “-core” modifier on the various genres of metal refers to metal bands adopting certain aesthetic and ideological concerns from early waves of American hardcore punk into whatever base off-shoot of heavy metal. That’s the simplistic, dummies version. It’s an equation: metal genre X + hardcore punk = X-core. Early general concerns of the paternal genre, “metalcore”: CoC, Suicidal Tendencies, DRI, and also Biohazard, Cro-Mags, VoD, Earth Crisis, and Converge, through to Hatebreed. Basically, equal love for the chugga-chugga raw power of Slayer, (good) Pantera, and (early) Metallica, along with youth crew social consciousness and the us-against-them, unity-through-hardcore of bands like Bad Brains and Black Flag. Add 20 odd years of bands -- tens of thousands of them -- six or seven more waves of what “hardcore” is, milk, eggs, and sugar. Stir and bake until blackened and here we are today: 80 different metal genres with the modifier “-core”.
So that’s what “core” is, sort of. It’s pretty much that or a bunch of angry dudes in camo shorts, whichever.
Shut Up! Shut Down!
Now, here’s Core in China, a CD compilation sampler -- a free, digital-only release -- organized by the website RockinChina.com to showcase bands all over this country that identify with one or several of portmanteau genre labels with “core” in them. At the risk of misrepresenting things and generalizing things, a vast majority of heavy music in China is largely encountered and created in the shadow of thrash metal -- Slayer, brah, and Metallica -- along with some basic encounter with “punk” as exemplified by Sex Pistols or Ramones or whatever back in the day, and emo/screamo today. Thus, a lot of the newer, younger heavy bands, a lot of them showcased on this comp, combine that intrinsic experience in basic thrash and punk with some conception and personal permutation of a contemporary “core” genre, towards an end product in which the bands are motivated towards making music that is modern, still unwritten, wide open, and, at the same time, ideologically relevant to personal experience.
This is the new heavy music in this country. This is the new metal, the new punk, the new whatevercore. The new beat. The new beat. The new beat. Or at least 20 bands’ version of it.
Ordnance
At the end of the day, the genre tags are less important, and are there merely to provide cursory in-roads to what you’re listening to. Genre tags can even be a disservice sometimes because dudes in certain metal genres super hate, hate, hate dudes in other metal genres. Anyone up for a black metal versus death metal gang war? But it’s a comp so of course some bands won’t be your thing, and hopefully, some bands you’ll like and want to hear more from. Here’s three as a quick taster.
Please install Flash Player
Please install Flash Player
Please install Flash Player
And you can download the whole 20-song disc for free -- totally for free -- at the band camp. Congrats to Azchael and Yang for putting it all together -- mammoth undertaking indeed. A Mastodon undertaking?
Eeesh.
If you want more information on the comp and all the bands appearing on it, click on this link to RockinChina.com.
Cover image is King Ly Chee
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ty_canadian, May 8th, 2012
Good compilation, but too bad there were no submissions from any Shanghai based bands. Hopefully next time?morgan, May 8th, 2012
Yeah apparently Max put out the call but Shanghai bands didn't step up to the plate. Guess there's no hardcore bands in this city... *cough, cough*Please sign in or register to comment