More Asian Metal I Like

When I wrote about Asian metal I like, a few mistakes were made. Some album covers were switched, some bands in my notes were overlooked. Plus I keep running into more great Asian metal. So I’m doing another post on Asian metal I like.

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Laang

I had already heard and liked Taiwanese one-man project Laang 冷 when I wrote that earlier post, and don’t know how it slipped my mind. It even has a dramatic backstory. The album Hǎiyáng 海洋 was written as a response to – almost a description of – the artist’s experience of being carjacked, shot in the head, and surviving a coma. I think it is literally impossible to be more metal than that.

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Symphony of Horror

I rarely look at email promoting music (hard enough just to keep track of emails from my editors). But the message alerting me to the existence of Symphony of Horror and their album Gekommende Aus Abaddon caught my eye, because it contained the word Kazakhstan. I’ve never heard music from Kazakhstan before, but I once had a boss from there, and we sometimes would talk about music. She preferred 70’s style prog to the heavier metal I like. Like Kazakhstan itself, my boss was both Asian and Russian; but Symphony of Horror, inexplicably, seem to be singing in German. Nevertheless, I had to click through for old time’s sake. And what I found was symphonic metal, but it was, dare I say it, tasteful? So much symphonic metal banks in too-muchness. Symphony of Horror has just enough.

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ZaRRaZa

Kazakhstan doesn’t make the news much, but when it does, it seems to be heavy metal. And I usually like it. So when I saw that ZaRRaZa is from Kazakhstan, I had to give a listen.

Their album wasn’t out yet, so there were only two videos. I ended up watching them over and over again and not just because they were badasses playing guitar in the snow wearing tank tops. One was “The Grudge19” which reminded me of a heavier The Hu with its use of traditional instruments and images of nature. The other was Failed Apocalypse19, a much more straightforward bit of death metal that grabs you by the throat and shakes you around – but in a good way. (BTW, both songs have ’19 in the name because the album Rotten Remains is a collection of old demo songs re-recorded in 2019.) I loved them both.

I’m a total cheapskate, but you can bet I pre-ordered Rotten Remains. It barely cost more than a double latte.

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Takafume Matsubara

Grind is not usually my subgenre. But I’m always interested in music from Japan, and I’m a sucker for a good backstory. So when I read about Takafume Matsubara and his battle against hand paralysis in the Bandcamp Daily, I was intrigued. Not all good guitar playing is virtuosic, but grind’s speed seemed like a big ask. Add to that his background in the martial arts and his self-description as “just a salaryman,” and of course I was curious. So I listened to Strange, Beautiful and Fast – and it was.

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Facelift Deformation

Facelift Deformation only put out two promos on Bandcamp (three songs total) back in 2017. I only discovered them because they share a name with another band I like – which might be the same one? This Hong Kong Facelift Deformation is not quite the same sound as the OSDM of the Facelift Deformation on Cybernetic Organism Atrocity released by Realityfade on Bandcamp. But both bands are anonymous, and the timelines fit together…But anyway, the Hongkies play(ed) a brutal kind of music I didn’t think Hong Kong was capable of. I think I like the newer (album/band) better. But you have got to love the title Dim Sum Massacre.

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Coffins

On Beyond the Circular Demise, Japanese band Coffins 東京都 presents an anthology of every death metal element I love, with none of the ingredients I don’t like. On all of my many trips to Japan I have searched for music like this and never found it. But Coffins has been spewing this vitriol since 1996. They are even scheduled to play Seattle in May, although I have no faith that concert will actually take place. Now that I know they exist, I’ll be looking forward to seeing them in the future.