Lets kick off the month with some metal.
Shanghai melodic death metal / speed metal band Fearless have just released a video of their latest track in rehearsal. The quality is good and it's worth a watch if you like the style. This version is instrumental.
Death to false metal, of course.
To be honest, the little I've heard from Fearless sounds like an instrumental carbon copy of the latest Children of Bodom albums, making them pretty much the definition of false metal. Shanghai must be the worst major city in China for metal.
What do you count as a major city in China? The metal scene here is bigger and more developed than every other city in China except Beijing.
Please explain.
Take eg. Xi'an which probably has the highest amount of quality acts next to Beijing. The guys behind Zuriaake/Varuna/Yn Gizarm/Hellward/Midwinter constantly release interesting stuff and to top it off there's Chaotic Aeon, my personal favourite death metal newcomers out of Asia for these past five years.
Another good example of a solid scene (albeit one centered around a very small group of people) is Nanchang, which not only houses the only Chinese band signed to a significant international label (Be Persecuted, maybe you caught them on their recent Chinese tour? I was unfortunately out of the country) but also offers really competent thrash in the form of Explosicum along with a few of the typical brutal death/goregrind bands found throughout China.
Tianjin has an impressive amount of demo bands coming out but I haven't heard very many of them.
There are most definitely metropolises that are worse metal wastelands than Shanghai (take for instance all of Guangdong, but at least they're close to Hong Kong) but if we're looking for quality metal per capita this place comes out looking pretty weak.
I'd be extremely happy to be proven wrong but so far every single band I've heard out of Shanghai has been either core- or nu "metal"-influenced.
Can you link to vids or pages of the bands you mentioned in a comment please. Ta.
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@Erik: What about those old death metal bands:
Tian Zang (Sky Funeral)
Xue Jing (Blood Funk)
Ling Chi
etc.
(Shanghai, 2005/6 era)