Amazing! 10 Genres of Metal in 3 Minutes by Raz Ben Ari:

中国摇滚乐 (China Rocks). As you can probably assume this part of my Asian Metal Bands-series is about chinese bands. Why do they rock? China has a pretty large rock/metal scene and slowly their are finding to an own identity

In the previous part of the series, I complained a bit about the fact that it was difficult to choose just a few bands from all those great bands, but I can assure you, in case of the chinese bands that task was even harder.

Ego Fall/Against Me:

The foundational line up of China’s first Metal Core Band Ego Fall came from the former inner Mongolian Grunge band called Subconscious (潜意识 QianYiShi) which was found back in 2000.

One year later, a new vocalist and a guitarist came into the band and led the music changed more towards metal style. In the beginning of 2004 the band name was officially changed to Against Me, and the music tend more into power metal. 2005 the initial vocalist and guitarist returned and brought their Melodic Death Metal influences into band. Now with two shouters on stage they also let different elements like industrial, NuMetal etc. flow into their music and mix it all up into nowadays Metal Core Style.

Up to date they released one album “Spirit of Mongolia” (2008) as Ego Fall.

The Rule in Troubled Times from Spirit of Mongolia

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Welcome to the second article of my Asian Metal Bands-series. In this part I will cover the metal scene of (South) Korea and it was really a hard task to break all those great bands down to a few.

Oathean

Oathean is a korean melodic black metal band that has been formed 1993 originally under the name Odin, but changed their name three years later after a short hiatus.

Neither their lyrical themes are subject to satanism or anti-christianity nor they are using corpsepaint which is actually typical for black metal bands. Their lyrics mainly deal with depression and sadness and they incorporate influences of folk metal as well as korean world music with the use of traditional korean instruments.

Since their name change, Oathean has released five albums: “The Eyes of Tremendous Sorrow” (1998), “Ten Days in Lachrymation” (2001), “The Last Desperate 10 Years as Ever” (2003, containing the 1997 demo and remastered old songs), “Fading Away into the Grave of Nothingness” (2004), “The Eyes of Tremendous Sorrow + As a Solitary Tree Against the Sky” (2005, containing five new songs and the first album) and “Regarding All the Sadness of the World” (2008).

Cruel Sadness from Regarding All the Sadness of the World:

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I have to confess that although I’ve been into metal for ages now, I’ve never really listened to hardcore — I don’t mean hard stuff, but sub-genre hardcore — and so I was kinda surprised as I listened to Converge for the very first time. Converge is a four-piece American band, formed in the winter of 1990 in Salem, Massachusetts, United States. Playing a blend of extreme metal and hardcore punk, this pioneer outfit helped define a lot of the rudiments of the fast-burgeoning metalcore and mathcore genres.

You can say that I’ve got a weakness for technical skilled musicians and so they hit me directly, though I think I will need a bit more time to get used to the singers voice and style, but see for yourself:

By the way, thanks goes out to Andy for commending and pointing my interest to them!

Drone is a german Trash Metal/Metalcore Band that won the international metal battle contest of 2006 at the Wacken Open Air. Here’s the opening track of their debut album “Juggernaut”:

Some of you may already noticed that I’m a big fan of those youtube-guitar-cover-nerds. Here’s another one that really kicks ass and has some good styles: KillrBuckeye. He’s covering mostly metalcore stuff like All That Remains, Killswitch Engage or Parkway Drive.

A small example of his skills; playing “The Sound Of Truth” by As I Lay Dying:

Check him out on KillrBuckeye on YouTube or his personal website at killrbuckeye.com.